New Google Tool Big for Marketers

Google introduced a new tool yesterday that aims at helping marketers use consumers’ search queries to not only tailor messaging, but also target messaging by geography. That latter part is a big deal, I think.

Google Insights for Search looks like a pretty useful tool on the surface. I haven’t spent enough time on it, yet, but here are a few advantages I see off the bat.

• You can get a sense for consumer interest in your brand across time based on search. Google Insights can show search trends for the past 30 days or the past four years. Are searches for your brand name decreasing, increasing or holding steady?

• You can overlay the consumer search interest across time with news headlines. Want to know if you had a bump in searches after you announced X new product through media relations?

• You can see WHERE the people who are searching for your brand live. Google Insights breaks it down by both state and by city. The data is normalized, so it doesn’t give you results based on total searches, but does give great ideas on what states and cities are searching most and least. Want to know what markets you should target with increased communications efforts to drive more awareness and search?

• You can see what related terms people searched for along with your brand and those are ranked, too. For example, I ran a search on one of my client’s for the past 12 months and can now confirm which words people associate with that brand when searching for more information. It gives you an idea about what consumers need from your brand. Want to know what words to sprinkle throughout your news release or your media messaging to increase chances your brand’s news coverage rises higher in search results?

• You can see what searches are rising fastest. They aren’t popular enough YET to break into the results shared in the last bullet, but they are growing at a faster percentage. Want to get an idea of what some of the most popular searches could be in a couple months? Want to get a jump on sprinkling those in your communications vehicles now so you own those keywords once they become top ten search material?

I’m going to spend some time playing with it the next few days. Check it out for yourself and let me know what opportunities I missed? What ways do you see using this tool? Or do you think it’s just hype?

*Image from Google.com.

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