What's in your search campaign?

I know, I know, yet another post about some innovation at Google. Sorry, they just keep me coming back for more. This time it's with Insights for Search, which is an enhancement to the ideas of Google Trends.

In this case, marketers can look at search volume against terms over time. Nothing new there.

But wait, there's more!

Added to volume-time series data, users can now see where that search volume comes from based on geographic region. And if you act now, you can see momentum. Which searches are on the rise? Which terms are losing popularity?

Yes, you say, but I already have more data than I can deal with...where's the wisdom?

Like many things online, the wisdom comes with experience. In this case, Google's Insights for Search should help us understand and test some of our assumptions about our prospects.

Assumptions like:

• where is our online search audience? Are they where are marketing plan says they are? Does they conform to our traditional demographic notions?

• what seasonality is associated with our audience's interests? Do our assumptions about when people consider or research purchases conform to what search volume tells us?

• what trends in terminology might reflect the leading or lagging edge of our prospect's perception? Is the terminology we use in our search campaign increasingly--or decreasingly--in the lexicon of our prospects?

As is typical of Google's toolsets, there is much more here than meets the eye... or that we'll try to cover in this post. One enhancement I'd like to see is tighter integration with the Analytics toolset...so many distinct tools of value, so little time to keep logging into different interfaces!

Here's a screen cap of a quick look at the search term 'graduate degrees' that shows some of the high level data available. Who knew those North Carolinians were so interested in graduate degrees?

(click to enlarge)