You don’t have to be selling ice creams by the beach to notice seasonal trends in your business – pretty much every business has its own busy periods of the year. Which of course is one of the main reasons why Google Insight was developed – to help advertisers identify the seasonal search trends that apply to their businesses, whether that’s a regular yearly change or a long-term shift.
And meanwhile, it can be pretty fascinating looking at the search stats that Google has accrued over the past few years – even for those non-geeks among us!
Whether it’s the predictable – the peak in searches for ’roast turkey’ every December, shortly and inevitably followed by an increase in ‘gym membership’ searches…
…or the slightly disheartening. See here how a pre-festive excitement about ‘santa’ is steadily on its way to being overtaken by one for ‘x factor’.
Though it’s not just these regular, annual trends that Google Insights highlights. As we look at a period of a few years, we can see the longer-term trends that may continue to shape the coming years. For example, most of us have been affected in some way by the global recession, but we can see how dramatically interest in ‘property investment’ has fallen since 2004.
Equally, the sudden onset of harsh, cold winters across the UK is reflected in the recent spikes for searches on ‘snow tyres’ – not something anyone seemed to care about much before the 2009 – 2010 winter!
Whether it’s trends in weather, business or pop culture, Google Insights offers a great tool in seeing just what our fellow searchers are interested in these days. But it’s also a pretty useful tool for tracking interest in your own industry, so long as you understand a couple of important factors about the Insights tool first.
For one thing, Google Insights does not help us estimate the amount of traffic a keyword will attract. Google ‘normalises’ the data, meaning that for each region, interest is shown on a scale of 0 – 100, allowing for different regions to be compared on an equal footing. So the graph doesn’t show the amount of traffic that a keyword has or should attract, but rather the likelihood of that keyword being searched in that area on a regular basis.
By the same token, a downward curve on the graph doesn’t necessarily mean less traffic for that keyword; it just means a decline in the share of traffic. If the number of Google users in an area (i.e. the population, for the purposes of this tool) grows, but the number of people searching on a certain terms stays the same, then this would show as a ‘decline’ in the Insights data.
So when might you need Google Insights? As we’ve seen above, it’s a great tool for investigating certain seasonal trends. Even if your industry isn’t an obvious candidate for seasonal fluctuations, there are countless factors that might nevertheless mean cause regular rises and dips in demand. And if your industry is seasonal, then the it doesn’t necessarily follow that people will be searching for your product or service at the time you think they should be. Google Insights helps you be better prepared.
Once you have a good idea of the seasonality of your industry or product, Insights can help you decide how best to market it. For example, by helping you find those features of your product that will attract the most searches, or by looking at how your competitors are positioning themselves in the market. If you’re interested in opening up your advertising to take in new regions, Google Insights can show you where there’s most interest in your product. And to further help you keep abreast with your marketplace, ‘Rising Searches’ shows you which related keywords are rising in popularity.
