January 23, 2008

SEW Experts: There's More to Keyword Strategy Than the Long Tail

Choosing which keywords you want to chase in your SEO strategy can be a challenging task. Go after terms that are too competitive, and you might not get there in time, or at all. Go after terms that are easier to rank high for, and you're likely to get there much faster, but at what cost? In today's By the Numbers column, "There's More to Keyword Strategy Than the Long Tail," Eric Enge suggests adopting a keyword strategy patterned after an NFL quarterback, with lots of options for short, medium, and long passing routes.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

June 26, 2007

SEW Experts: Five Fundamental Questions of Keyword Research

In today's au Natural column, "Five Fundamental Questions of Keyword Research," Mark Jackson reviews five fundamental questions to ask of your site when performing keyword research.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:01 AM | Permalink

April 10, 2007

Wordtracker Launches Wordtracker Academy

Wordtracker announced today the launch of Wordtracker Academy. This new initiative is designed to offer webmasters expert articles, tips and tricks, and case studies to help them make better use of keyword research.

One example piece of content you can find in Wortracker University is titled "Using Keywords - an eight point plan". This plan details the 8 basic opportunities for leveraging keyword data.

This is a good move for Wordtracker, as they get to generate some publicity, create some goodwill by providing the free tools, and, of course, use their own tools and advice in generating the new pages for their site!

Posted by at 10:15 AM | Permalink

January 29, 2007

Keyword Research Industry Still Lacks a Clear Choice

Keyword phrase research is perhaps the most important part of any Search Engine Marketing campaign. The ability to pinpoint the phrases used by searchers seeking a product or service is invaluable both in paid Search and Organic SEO. Unfortunately, the majority of the available services are lacking when it comes to bet-the-farm-on-it certainty of search numbers and predictions.

Most SEOs and Paid Search marketers will cite WordTracker is the default best available software out there, although some competitors are starting to make headway, such as Trellian's Keyword Discovery tool.

Members of popular search engine marketing forums such as the SEW Forums consistently look for ways to find keywords in an automated fashion, as evidenced by yet another post today asking for advice on a particular keyword research tool.

The consensus in these types of threads is that WordTracker is the most close to accurate, and we in fact use it at our agency. Overture (now Yahoo! Search marketing) has had a tool out there for perhaps the longest time (although it is reportedly down at this time), but savvy search marketers have known that this tool is subject to inaccuracy due to automated searches included in the count, plus the fact that it only includes searches conducted in the Yahoo! network.

Various search marketers have come up with ways to try and better estimate keyword totals, including Aaron Wall of seobook.com. He and others have used the Overture tool as the basis for the total predictions, and added a percentage to that number to account for Google and other search engine users. Google also has a keyword prediction tool, but it does not provide a number, only listing possible related keywords.

Trellian's tool is interesting, because they claim to get their data directly from ISPs. The main argument against them has generally been that the ISPs may not be the “best” of the 7000+ available in the U.S, alone these days.

Until the search engines themselves are willing to give search marketers direct access to their search records, the most accurate way to predict future searches of terms has been to pay for broad match keyword terms in all sponsored search portals for a period of time, with an unlimited budget. Given the impression data derived from these accounts (using the search network numbers alone and omitting the contextual networks), as well as scouring the keyword-specific referrer logs of the target sites to find the long tail terms, one can make the most likely prediction. In cases here this has been done until a statistically confident sample is reached, predictions by Overture and WordTracker have proven to be inaccurate.

The answer? Use a combination of the above methodologies/tools, as well as someone with insight into the particular industry and a sample of likely searchers to get the best possible prediction of future searcher behavior. No one tool or method is likely to be available any time soon to help with this important task.

Posted by Chris Boggs at 3:13 PM | Permalink

December 28, 2006

Bloggers Produce the Hottest Keywords?

In DM News, Andy Beal recommends that you search blogs to find the hottest keywords. There's a nice bit of logic there, and it makes sense to find bloggers who influence your industry and keep up with their posts.

The underlying premise is that bloggers produce or come up with the most prescient keywords. Now I like reading and participating in blogs as much as anyone, but that's surely not the only source.

Someone who oversees a dynamic website about your market seems equally valuable. Some organizations are setting up wikis these days, and predictive insights and keywords could be gleaned from them.

Don't forget to listen to smaller voices. Scan and look for obvious changes in external search queries that led visitors to your site. Check how that differs from internal search queries as well. Your visitors will share their new interests and keywords too.

Posted by at 1:19 PM | Permalink

December 18, 2006

Keyword Research Best Practices

Barry pointed out a great response to thread at Search Engine Watch forums by Paid Search Guru Ian McAnerin. A member had asked Forum visitors which industries they "would not touch with a 10 foot SEO pole?"

Ian answers led to some additional excellent discussion at SEW and a couple of gems in the SER comments.

Keyword research is a topic that is considered to be very basic by many in the SEO and Paid Search fields. This is likely due to the fact that it has been one of the few constants since the early days of SEO, when tools began to appear that were geared towards finding the right keywords. Since, many writing about the subject have indicated the same core needs: relevancy and popularity, including Danny from way back when, Kevin Lee, Shari Thurow, and most recently Christine Churchill.

Ian's post at Search Engine Watch makes three main points: First that some industries may be too difficult to venture into without specialized experience; secondly, you may not want to venture into some industries due to business concerns (he cites Realtors as being especially “difficult” when it comes to payment or buying in to the value); and lastly that your personal belief set may be in conflict with the particular industry, such as Hate or Porn sites, for example.

Ian comment raised some good follow up questions, and he defends his opinion that one should “cut their teeth” by targeting more localized terms. The whole topic leads well to a discussion of the core competency of keyword research. When venturing into a new space, it is likely that many SEO's are at a slight disadvantage due to being unfamiliar with terms. When deciding on whether to accept a project, it actually takes a fair amount of diligence on the part of any SEO; otherwise they may be simply saying “sure we'll get you ranked.” This could be an alarm signal.

Using geo-modified keywords as the target can also prove to be difficult if not properly done. In some cases, there may be a majority of searchers using the city or town before the more general term (i.e.: Timbuktu hotel) while in others, people may use it more often after the term. The fact is that without excellent and trusted keyword research, only trial and error will lead to the required log files that report the actual activity. This trial and error period can be greatly eased by having an unlimited paid search budget to run all keywords on broad match across all engines for at least 2 or three months. Unfortunately not everyone has the budget to do that. However, running these types of campaigns on a local basis may be somewhat helpful.

One comment that was very insightful at the SER blog was that “generally the most competitive websites have the highest cost in PPC advertising. Find the biggest spenders and you have the stiffest competition.” Although this is a generalization, it holds fairly true. When making a decision as to whether to venture into an industry for SEO, a quick check of the results pages for Paid Search listings can save a good amount of time for small SEO/SEM shops.

Posted by Chris Boggs at 9:09 AM | Permalink

November 1, 2006

New adCenter Blog & adCenter Lab Features

There is a new location for the adCenter blog, it is now at http://adcenterblog.spaces.live.com/ (yea, the whole live.com thing). Also, adCenter labs released updates for some of the tools.

Search Funnel 1.5: This demo will be updated with over 4 million keywords added to the database.
Keyword Forecast: This new demo will display a search term's impression count forecast and demographic predictions in any format: flash, picture or text.

I have screen captures of the Keyword Forecast at the Search Engine Roundtable - pretty neat stuff.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:04 AM | Permalink

September 13, 2006

Hitwise Data Center Offers Search Terms & Top Search Engines For Various Countries

New from Hitwise is the Hitwise Data Center, sharing details on web surfing behavior. There are different data centers for various countries, and for search marketers, two key reports tell you top terms and top search engines.

Hitwise Data Center US, for example, shows you the top search engines by volume of searches here and top search terms here. From the Data Center home page, you can also use the drop-down box to get top terms by particular categories, such as these for dating.

Beyond the US, there's also:

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 2:49 PM | Permalink

August 14, 2006

Another Tool Uses AOL Data For Search Term Research

SEO Blackhat released a tool that uses AOL data, Hitwise figures and Overture's suggestion tool to figure out the search volume and click-through rate you can expect from a search phrase at the various search engines. Last week we reported on a more basic tool that did something similar but this new tool gives you an "estimate with some certainty how many clicks to expect for ranking anywhere in any search engine for any term." Basically, you go to this tool and enter in the number of searches you expect to be performed for a keyword phrase. Then after you hit update, the page shows you what your expected click through rate would be for that search term at the various engines by position.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:07 AM | Permalink

August 11, 2006

New Keyword Suggestion Tool Uses AOL Data

SEO Scoop spotted a new keyword suggestion tool that estimates the volume of traffic you can expect for a given query based on the AOL data slip up. Basically, the tool has data from March to May of this year, it then takes the market share figures of Google, Yahoo and MSN and multiples that by the AOL search volumes for those queries. Of course, you have the issue of people searching differently at different engines. AOL users are typically less tech savvy, when compared to Google users. So I wonder how accurate the estimates are?

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 11:01 AM | Permalink

July 19, 2006

11 Ways To Drive Traffic To Your Site

Rand at SEOMoz writes up an excellent post he named 10 Remarkably Effective Strategies for Driving Traffic. He has given us 10, plus one bonus idea for driving traffic to your site. I will list them in summery here, but Rand has posted the "ingredients", "process", "results" and "examples" for each listed traffic driving strategy at his post.

10) Targeting Unmonetized Searches 9) Creating Controversy 8) Maps & Mashups 7) Event Coverage 6) Top Ten Lists 5) Online Tools 4) Graphic & Web Design 3) Leveraging Social Networks 2) Blogging & Blog Comments 1) Reporting Remarkable News *) Offering Something Incredible

Now get on implementing these ideas. Yea, where to begin. :)

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:19 AM | Permalink

June 1, 2006

MSN adLab Launches With a Variety of Keyword Tools

MSN first announced adLab back in January, but it has now been made available to everyone (in beta) with a wide variety of interesting keyword tools for advertisers and marketers. They have launched with 11 demos, broken down into areas Paid Search, Contextual Advertising, Behavior Targeting and Emerging Markets.

7 more demos are listed as "coming soon", providing a teaser of what is to come, although no timeline is given for when they will be available.

Some tools will definitely be useful to advertisers, such as the Search Volume Seasonality Forecast, Search Funnel and Keyword Mutation Detection. Those in Local Search will want to check out the demo on Local Ads, which ironically uses Starbucks for their opening demo (along with an outdated notation about their Christmas Blend), although you can specify your own keywords.

Some interesting tools, and I am sure those in paid search will be watching closely to see if any of these are integrated more closely into Microsoft adCenter, and how Google and Yahoo will respond.

Posted by Jennifer Slegg at 6:58 AM | Permalink

May 10, 2006

Fun With Google Trends

Danny just posted about Google Trends, a service of Google that shows you search volume trends over time for a keyword or for multiple keywords. I thought it would be fun to ask Google Trends which search engine, of the top four, is the most popular, in terms of search volume. So I queries Google Trends for Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, MSN (keep in mind ask jeeves is now ask.com). I also thought it would be fun to pin Apple vs. Windows vs. Linux. So let's see what Google Trends had to say...

Battle of the Search Engines: Search Volume: What is very interesting to note, is that Yahoo was queried more often at Google Search than Google. Which makes sense, who in their right minds would search on the keyword "Google" at Google? Um, well, I have seen people do it, trust me. So what is really interesting is that people are actually searching on "Google" at Google. While all search engines seem to have an upward slop, in search volume, Ask Jeeves seems to have a downwards slop. So let's trend Ask.com on the list as well, and you will notice that the Ask.com search volume bar hits above the Ask Jeeves search volume bar as soon as Ask Jeeves begins to slope downwards. So based on Google Trends, the most popular search engines, in order of search volume are Yahoo, Google, MSN and Ask (as of April 2006). News Volume: But when you look at Google News search volume things change slightly. Yes, someone at Google News is more likely to search on the the keyword "Google" because the search is totally different in nature. I am not looking to find Google.com at Google News, I am looking to find news items on Google at Google News. So, as you would expect "Google" is has the highest news search volume. Yahoo, MSN and then Ask follow Google. Digging Deeper: What happens when you look at it by city, region or languages, does that change the results? Well, yes! We know Australians are found of Google and Google Trends shows us that Australians are more fond of MSN than Google, but more fond of Google than Yahoo or Ask based on search volume. In India, searchers love Yahoo more than anyone else. From Chile or Turkey, well you gotta have MSN as your favorite search engine. Poor Ask never wins the game but they do pretty well in the United Kingdom. You can also play with cities and languages to see how that makes a difference...

Battle of the Operating Systems: Search Volume: For those that know me, I am an Apple fan - using one right now to write this. Unfortunately, not everyone is like me, well the majority of people are not like me. Search volume on "windows" is way more popular than Apple (and Apple also stands for a fruit!) Guess what, Linux is also more popular than Apple! News Volume: But when it comes to news search volume, Apple has its spikes. For one, Apple is always more searched on than Linux for news search. But there are times where Apple jumps ahead on news search to surpass Windows. Digging Deeper: So what does this mean? Well, obviously, people are more likely to have bugs with Windows OS and Linux OS when compared to Apple. Duh! People are searching for solutions at Google for their problems. Just kidding. The region, language and city breakdown don't really show too much more on this particular query.

You see, this tool can be used for educational purposes, commercial purposes and can also be used for fun.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 3:36 PM | Permalink

Google Trends: Peer Into Google's Database Of Searches

Now live via Google Labs is a new Google Trends service, announced today as part of Google Press Day. The service allows you to tap into Google's database of searches, to determine what's popular. For example, do a trends query on cars, and you can see the volume of queries over time, by city, regions, languages and so on.

Let's take a single search first and go through the motions. A query on ipod gives a chart going back through January 2004, which is as far back as Google Trends data goes. You can see spikes in searches, and these are often labeled with letters that lead to related news items. Google says it is using similar technology to do this as it does with company price charts in Google Finance.

Below the chart, you get some geographical and regional data. For example, you'll see most iPod searches are happening in New York, then in Irvine, then San Francisco, London and so on. That's the city data. Next is a Regional option, which gives you a breakdown by country (iPod searches are big in the UK then the US and Australia). Finally, you can narrow by language (Most searches for iPod are done in English, then Japanese).

Want to narrow in? You can do a variety of things. Using the drop down boxes, you can pick a particular month, such as last month. You can also pick a particular region, like last month just in the United States.

You aren't limited to single words. Enter multiple words by commas to do comparisons, such as google,yahoo,microsoft. That query shows you each term in a different color, and you can then see all the breakdowns for each word, as well. You can do up to five words in total. Want to do multiword queries? There's ways to do that -- check out the help page for more.

Sometimes when you do a search, you'll get something like this message:

Your terms - larry page - do not have enough search volume to show graphs.

What's happening here is that Google's working to help protect search privacy. There's a slight chance someone might enter something like their own name along with something embarrassing or private. Potentially, Google Trends could reveal this information.

My Private Searches Versus Personally Identifiable Searches article explains this issue more, and it's something Google used successfully to argue against handing over query data to the US Department Of Justice. Given this, it needed to put some protections into place. That mechanism is to only show data about queries that happen often.

"Something has to be in the hundreds of times per week for you to see trends," said Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products & user experience, about the service. This is also touched on in the help page on the Google Trends site.

Some things to keep in mind. For example, Mayer cited to me a yankees,red socks comparison. Searches for Yankees are well above the Red Socks, so they must be more popular! Well, it's also a case that there are more people in New York than Boston, so there are more people potentially searching for the Yankees.

(Postscript: So I'm an idiot -- it's Red Sox, of course. And yankees,red sox for 2006 shows Red Sox actually much closer to Yankees. So cop-out time, the point in general remains valid. There are things that can skew the stats in ways you might not expect. For example, if you search for a particular company and you see growth in their name, are they more popular? In 2005, you might think so for Kryptonite. But go broader, you'll see a spike in 2004 associated with the Kryptonite locks-can-be-picked-by-ballpoint-pin-fiasco. That incident might have helped fuel some of the rise in following year -- searches that aren't necessarily reflecting a popular view of the company).

Another caveat. The geographic data is based on IP targeting, which isn't perfect. In particular, people who use AOL are often seen as if they are in Virginia, regardless of their true location.

How about query spam? Google's got a system designed to help filter for this, either if intentionally done or accidentally. For example, if it sees many queries all coming from the same IP address, that might be caught. Similarly, if it sees many queries coming from different cookies, it could be caused by the same person who rejects standing cookies. Each search would generate a new cookie, so potentially the same single person might be seen as different individuals.

"We are savvy to that case and make sure we saw queries from 100 different unique cookies that aren't fresh," she said.

Also, the data isn't filtered or consolidated in the way things happen in Google Zeitgeist or other search data mining tools. In other words, car brings back different results than cars. And if you want to see the dark underbelly of search, you can see in sex,ipod that if Apple sold a sexPod, it would leave iPod in the dust. You can also search for explicit adult terms, should you have the hankering.

Finally, Google rightly warns that this is more a play thing that something you can use for definitive predictions of popularity.

For a different spin on Google Trends, check out Barry's post, Fun With Google Trends. Now that we've warned you not to take the data too seriously, time for some comparisons anyway :)

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 3:26 PM | Permalink

April 10, 2006

Keyword Research Tools And Keyword Data Figures

Aaron Wall has a nice write up on many of the keyword research tools available today. He runs down some of the pros and cons with each, as well as gives you a list of items you should be aware with for any of these tools. Aaron explains that you always need to be concerned with "the biases of the providers" because they might have a ventured interest in you purchasing a specific keyword or two. He also explains that all the figures are "estimates" and to "consider how spread out the search terms likely are in your industry." Aaron also posted at ThreadWatch that WordTracker is selling top 500,000 keywords it has collected over the years.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:28 AM | Permalink

April 3, 2006

Just How Accurate Is The Google Zeitgeist?

Accuracy of Google Zeitgeist over at our Search Engine Watch Forums is a nice "what gives" about some oddities in the international version of the Google Zeitgeist, where it gives you a rundown on search behavior in various countries. For instance, why is viagra so hot in Singapore -- and why do links from the Zeitgeist actually bring up Google South Africa?

It got me to give the lists for each country a second look, and I was scratching my head as well. For example, "national lottery" is the top popular query for the United Kingdom in Feburary 2006? Really? Somehow, I doubt it.

Let's spin back to the Google Zeitgeist in general. I don't think Google's ever released a complete "top searches" list on it. Instead, they focus "rising" terms or popular terms in various categories, such as this:

Zeitgeist This Week Gaining Search Queries: Week Ending March 27, 2006

1. debra lafave 2. scarlett johansson 3. danica patrick 4. chicken little 5. paul dana 6. buck owens 7. daylight savings time 8. george mason 9. shakira 10. rocio durcal 11. stay alive 12. inside man 13. super adventure club 14. sasha cohen 15. tiger woods

These aren't the most popular queries. These are queries that are said to be gaining the most growth. However, Google filters out things like navigational terms or sexual terms, so there could be some gainers we aren't seeing.

On a monthly basis, you can get what look like top terms in various categories. You can see some examples here, then the monthly archives stop, from November 2005 through January 2006. The current page here here has Feburary 2006.

Those top searches feel OK. I can see something like "iran" as the most searched for country or "xbox 360" as the most searched for video game. But now let's go to the international list.

Why does Singapore have "viagra" at the top of the list? First, maybe it isn't. "Popular" queries don't necessarily mean most popular for each country. Second, other counties might have plenty of viagra searches, as well. But Google might be filtering these out of the top query lists and failed to do that for Singapore.

Similarly, why is "national lottery" seeming to be the most popular query in the UK? Chances are, it's not. Again, popular does not equal most popular. I'm sure any country with a national lottery gets a large number of similar queries, a navigational request of people trying to see what the winning numbers are. It might be these are being filtered out of other lists but not the UK's.

Anyway, I'll drop a note to Google to see if I can get a little clarity on some of this.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:59 PM | Permalink

March 22, 2006

Google Enhances Keyword Tool; Adds Global Trend Graphs

Google AdWords announced that they have added "global trends" to the Keyword Tool. Global trends shows the search volume of a particular keyword phrase, charted over a 12 month historical period. To access this data, you can go here and then enter your keyword phrases. Then click the "Get More Keywords", after the page loads, on the right side, select from the "Show columns" drop down menu, the "Global search volume trends" option. You will then see this data charted for you.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:58 AM | Permalink

November 12, 2005

eBay Unveils Service With New and Historical Info About Popular Search Terms

Search engine marketers might be interested to learn about a new service from eBay that launched yesterday. It allows subscribers (three different payment plans are available) to access a ton of business intelligence from the eBay database including top keyword searches by category or related keywords.

The most costly plan ($24.99/month) offers some additional features including the ability to see searches by site or country and includes 90 days of historical data. More about what search metrics are available in this FAQ. Additional info about the service in general is available from Beta News and the IDG News Service.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:06 PM | Permalink

November 7, 2005

Getting the Airfare Buzz from Kayak.com

Kayak Buzz from travel search engine/aggregator Kayak allows the searcher to see what are the "'best fares'" to the most searched destinations from any airport in the world based on the searches other Kayak users have conducted. Your results are mapped on a Google Map. I wonder if they'll try it with MSN or Yahoo Maps?

The service combines some of the most popular ideas and topics in the online/search world today (below in no specific order):

Using the web to spot "buzz"
Google Maps
Mashups
Communities of Users
Vertical Search and travel search aggregators

Let's run a search. We'll search for the best 25 fares from Chicago-O'Hare Airport (ORD). You can enter a city or airport code. If you enter a city name, a drop down appear with choices of airports.

Enter ORD
Click the "Get the Buzz Button"
A Google Map will appear with colored icons (depending on the fare) next to the cities for the best 25 fares
In the left column, you'll see a list of fare prices and cities. You can limit to a specific price range by moving the slider
Now, click on the city name on the list of map
I'll select Phoenix. A pop-up appears with the price someone paid, the travel dates, the source of the fare, and how many searches the price is based on.
Remember, if you search for the same fare you might not get it. Why? You might be traveling on different dates and airline fares are constantly changing.

Bottom Line: Fun and interesting technology that might even turn you on to a great airfare.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:10 AM | Permalink

October 21, 2005

Google Releases New Keyword Research Tool To Advertisers

New Keyword Popularity Tool Debuts in Adwords Accounts over in our SEW Forums has SEW forum editor Elisabeth Osmelowski spotting the new Google AdWords Keyword Tool and inviting discussion. Aaron Wall over at SEO Book in New Google AdWords Keyword Suggestion Tool provides a nice rundown on what it offers, including sorting by popularity, performance history, cost and predicted ad position. He also points at a new page of tips from Google about the new tool.

I took a quick spin myself. Enter a term, and you get back a list ranked by "relevance," though Google doesn't really explain what relevance is despite a help page supposedly answering this. I mean, if I enter [cars] into the search box, why exactly is "rental cars" more relevant than "donate cars?"

Using a drop down box, the "Keyword Popularity" option is much more helpful. Now I can see a new Search Volume column. Unlike with Yahoo's tool, there aren't counts given. Instead, PageRank-like bars show popularity, the more green, the better. Click on the Search Volume hyperlink above the column, and now things sort by popularity. Slick! It's something you couldn't do with the old tool.

Check out the Site-Related Keywords tab on the new tool. Enter the URL of a page, and Google will show you all the key terms it thinks the page is relevant for. That's nice for contextual targeting, the intent of the tool. But it's also a useful way to see what terms Google thinks an important page is relevant for. Or enter your own page, and see if Google's finding you relevant for the terms you think you should be targeting.

Want to discuss or comment? Contribute in our New Keyword Popularity Tool Debuts in Adwords Accounts thread.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:02 AM | Permalink

October 4, 2005

Mastering Google AdWords

Google likes everyone to believe that using AdWords is a snap, requiring no more than five minutes and a credit card to get going. Seasoned search marketers know otherwise, understanding that creating a sponsored link is just one small aspect of managing a successful AdWords campaign.

Now we've got an excellent guide to AdWords written by Andrew Goodman, who's both an expert with the program on behalf of his search marketing clients, but also an astute and acerbic observer of Google's business practices. His new book gives us a concentrated dose of experience and insights that make a fascinating and highly valuable read. I've got a review of Andrew's new book in today's SearchDay article, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Google AdWords.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 10:00 AM | Permalink

July 14, 2005

An RSS Feed for Google Zeitgeist is Now Available

Since Google doesn't offer an "official" RSS (or ATOM) feed for their Google Zeitgeist rankings of popular search terms, Kunal Anand decided to create one using a "screen scraper" he built with Perl code. Here's a link to the GZeitgeist feed along with some technical details posted on Kunal's blog. On Searchblog, JB wonders if the feed will be around for long since it's a screen scrape.

On a related note, the Yahoo Buzz Index of popular search terms offers a number of "official" RSS feeds.

Posted by Gary Price at 5:37 PM | Permalink

July 6, 2005

Hitwise Releases Keyword Intelligence Service

Hitwise, best known for tracking the online behavior of 25 million internet users every day, has introduced a new keyword research tool designed for small and medium sized businesses. The tool, which monitors usage at all of the major search engines, also provides guidance on "successful" search terms—those that actually resulted in a user visiting a web site. Like the popular Wordtracker keyword research tool, Hitwise Keyword Intelligence offers a number of tools that help search marketers with search term research and management.

Keyword Intelligence offers a subset of data and search term analysis features that are available within the Hitwise Competitive Intelligence service. I'm planning an in-depth look at the service soon. Meanwhile, for more information see today's press release announcing the new service.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 12:16 PM | Permalink

June 21, 2005

Sex Is Still A Top Search Term

I had someone email me recently asking whether the "urban legend" of sex and porn being top search terms was still true. Hmm. Is it? I thought it would be fun to check back on the situation. In the longer version of this post for Search Engine Watch members, a look at how "popular" search queries lists such as shown here get cleaned up, so that sex doesn't show. Plus, data from a study released last year on how sex-related queries have dropped. That may be so, but keyword research tool Wordtracker sent me an unfiltered version of its top 30 list that I've posted for members. It shows sex is still number one -- to the count of 302,993 searches per day based on data over the past 60 days from Infospace-owned Dogpile and Metacrawler. Number two? Porn, at 234,751 queries per day.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:57 PM | Permalink

June 15, 2005

Search Trends & Seasonality

With proms in the US happening in May, those looking for dresses clearly get going the month before, right? That's what Hitwise's Bill Tancer thought. But interest actually starts as far back as November. Search Timing: The Next Competitive Edge from Bill at MediaPost shares a few other charts showing things like how dieting queries DO mesh with New Year's Resolutions and how LCD TVs are growing in popularity as the technology matures.

What to do if you can't tap into the great but expensive historical data that Hitwise can provide? Priority Submit's Keyword Research tool can also give you some glimpse into seasonal changes. But don't forget that you can test seasonality at any time. Consider keeping a seasonal campaign running at a low budget level. See a spike? You may have stumbled onto a seasonal spike you didn't expect.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 2:20 PM | Permalink

February 23, 2005

Oneupweb Study Finds Longer Search Phrases Convert Better Than Shorter

A study from search marketing firm Oneupweb finds that in general, longer search terms convert better than shorter ones. In particular:

Conversion rates rose as the number of keywords increased, peaking at between 33 to 38 percent when there were four keywords in total. Then rates dropped.
Single keywords searches had high conversion until company names were removed. Without these, single keyword searches then converted less than searches with two, three or four terms in them.

Recommendations? If you aren't targeting longer phrases, you should be considering it. That's always been good advice, but this adds further backing to it. The flipside is that longer terms generally bring in less traffic, something else the study confirmed.

More about the study, said to be based on mining traffic and conversation data for millions of records, can be found by reading the white paper Oneupweb offers.

See also this past ClickZ article, Single-Word Searches Aren't Dead Yet, where Fredrick Marckini recaps a similar study his firm iProspect did, looking at the number of terms used in searches over the years.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:16 AM | Permalink

February 18, 2005

More Zeitgeist from Google

A ZDNet article and a post on the Google Blog inform us that Zeitgeist lists for three more countries are now online:

+ India + Ireland + New Zealand

Posted by Gary Price at 9:33 AM | Permalink

February 7, 2005

Fast Overture Counts For Final Word Lists

Want the volume of searches from Overture for different words? The Overture Keyword Selector Tool is well familiar to search marketers as a way to enter a term and see the volume in a given month for that term and those related to it. But what if you want just the counts for a particular set of terms you already know, say a group you've finalized on? A new tool out lets you do exactly this. Cut and paste your list into the web form, then you'll get back counts for just those terms. Want to discuss the tool? Visit our forum thread about it.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:08 AM | Permalink

January 25, 2005

Fix The Terms First

Before you start fixing your HTML in a quest to improve search rankings, consider if you need to reassess the terms you are targeting. The same is true for tinkering with paid bids. Fredrick Marckini in Keywords: Speak Your Audience's Language from ClickZ argues that you might not be properly targeting the searcher.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:38 AM | Permalink

January 17, 2005

Google = Pornking? Fun With the Google AdWords Keyword Tool

As some of you already know, I'm a librarian and come at web search with the background of a researcher. I've always monitored SEM to some degree but I've still got plenty to learn. Some of my education comes from reviewing sites and trying different resources aimed at web advertisers. Just the other day I was checking out the Google AdWords Keyword Tool. I tried various terms and was interested to see what terms it tossed back at me for the search term "Google." I had a chuckle when reviewing the list. Why? One of "expanded broad matches" was the term "pornking." I have a screen capture here.

Posted by Gary Price at 6:31 PM | Permalink

January 5, 2005

Updates To SEW Search Term Research Resources

I've updated our long-standing What People Search For - Most Popular Keywords page to provide updated links to the ways major search engines let the public see what's popular. And while I cover the majors, I've also listed a category from dWoz on the topic that goes into even more depth for search engines large and small across the web.

Another long-standing page, Researching Keywords for our SEW members, has been updated to provide a fresh, annotated guide to major search term research tools, including the new Trellian one (more on that via this SEW Forum discussion) plus some high-end tools from Hitwise, comScore and Yahoo.

SEW members should also see our SEM Tips: Search Term Research and Stats: Search Behavior categories of Search Topics for articles generally on the topic of search term research, targeting and how people search.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:07 PM | Permalink

January 4, 2005

ObjectGraph and Other Dynamic Search Term Suggestion Tools

If you find Google Suggest interesting and/or useful, Tara lets us know about the ObjectGraph Dictionary. It has the look and feel of the new Google new term suggestion tool.

ObjectGraph allows you to find definitions based on a word list using a version of the 1913 edition of Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (about 200,000 words) or the Free Online Dictionary of Computing (about 14,000 terms).

Btw, in this December blog post, I pointed out two other services: AOL's PinPoint Shopping and the LookAhead News Index from Surfwax that also offer dynamic search term suggestions. AOL's tool has been online for several months while LookAhead News has been available for about a year. Worth a look.

Posted by Gary Price at 6:46 PM | Permalink

December 13, 2004

More Search Term Refinement Tools

In Danny's blog post about the new Google Suggest beta he mentions a similar type of query refinement tool available from AOL's new Pinpoint Shopping.

It's also worth mentioning that Surfwax has offered a dynamic query refinement tool called "LookAhead" for almost a year. It's available with their news search database and offers search-terms based on a controlled vocabulary.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:36 PM | Permalink

December 10, 2004

Google Suggest Offers Query Refinement

Google is long, long overdue to provide query refinement tools that other search engines have had for ages. You know, like if you search for cars on Yahoo, it will come back and say at the top of the page:

Also try: used cars, rental cars, cars for sale, new cars More...

Or over at Ask Jeeves, a search for cars brings up a list of "Related Searches" on the right-hand side of the screen.

This type of feature is great for searchers who begin too broadly with their query. Google's beta tested refinement links like this in the past against a small random sample of searchers. But now the new Google Suggest feature finally lets anyone use it.

There's a twist Google Suggest from what Google's experimented with before. Rather than show you suggestions AFTER you search, Google starts popping up suggestions within the search box while you type, before you search.

It's different, and I don't really know if I like it yet. I wish I could get the traditional "do the search, we'll show you the most popular related searches as links" style of refinement in addition or instead of this.

Tara Calishain, where I picked up the news of the new feature from, also finds it a bit distracting and wants more as well: Google Has A New One for the Labs -- Google Suggest.

Gary points out that AOL's Pinpoint Shopping has a similar feature that when you type "drops down" suggestions as you type but before you search. I checked it out, and it's a nice implementation.

Want to learn more? Be sure to check out the Google Suggest FAQ.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:45 AM | Permalink

October 26, 2004

Searcher Habits

An interesting AP story: Experts: Web searches for sex declining, e-commerce increasing that reports on some research findings published in a new book titled, Web Search: Public Searching of the Web by noted information scientists, Dr. Amanda Spink (University of Pittsburgh) and Dr. Bernard J. Jansen (Penn. State University). By the way, their web sites link to plenty of interesting material.

The AP article discusses their research finding that people are searching for e-commerce more and sex less.

"Twenty percent of all searching was sex-related back in 1997, now it's about 5 percent..."It's a little bit more in Europe, 8-10 percent, but in comparison to everything else, it's a very small percent," Spink said.

This makes sense since e-commerce has boomed in the past seven years.

What I find most interesting (and somewhat sad) is that their research shows searcher habits haven't changed much in the past seven years.

What hasn't changed much in seven years is how hard people are willing to work at searching. The answer: Not very. Spink and Jansen found that people averaged about two words per query and two queries per search session.

"The searches are taking less than five minutes and they're only looking at the first page of results," Spink said. "That's why people are wanting to get their results on the first page" of search engine results. Spink goes on to say, "We were surprised that people weren't doing more complex searches... If you put a couple of words into the Web, you're going to get hundreds of thousands of results. I think people aren't trained very well to use the search engines."

Dr. Spink is right on the money. Now, how do we solve the problem? I wish I knew.

Some random thoughts.

It's not only one of training but also one of marketing and human nature.

For example, people can't search a vertical database or another web engine if they don't what's available and that it could save them TIME and effort in the long run. Perhaps people are searching in the wrong place but believe that one database offers it ALL. Even if this was the case, most searches don't utilize any of the advanced features web engines currently offer which can help create more precise results. I recently heard that about 98% of the searches at major web engines don't use any advanced syntax or search features. We can clearly see with tools like Jux2 that the amount of overlap between major web databases isn't as great as people might think and that it's possible for a user to find a better answer by using more than one engine. Those of us in the library world are always reminding people that for some types of searches it's always a good idea to use more than one web engine.

Perhaps tools like Clusty/Vivisimo and other clustering tools along with federated/metasearch, answer engines, and search personalization will help. Of course, if the searcher doesn't know what they're searching for in the first place, personalized results and they're the persons past search behavior might not be very helpful. Maybe one day some search tool(s) will offer an interactive computer-based type of "reference interview."

However, the biggest issue and the one that's very difficult to change, is human nature. When it comes to research, this is what author and librarian Tom Mann calls the principle of least effort.

Posted by Gary Price at 8:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 29, 2004

New Google Traffic Estimator Tool Up - Got Suggestions?

Google's added a new Traffic Estimator tool that lets you discover traffic for a term without having to actually add the term to an account or campaign. You can see clicks per day, average CPC, cost per day and average estimated position.

The tool's gotten a good reception in our forums so far. But folks still want more features. Fortunately AdWordsRep, Google's official rep for AdWords on our forums, has been busy answering questions and gathering up the suggestions. So jump in if you've got feedback to share in this thread: New Adwords Traffic Estimator.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 30, 2004

Tips On Keyword Research

How Effective Is Your Keyword Research? from ClickZ provides tips on researching keywords in a variety of ways.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 2:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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