Google Tools For Marketer

Google Trends, a two-year-old service that, for instance, reveals that Cisco’s stock price and Michael Lockwood, the husband of Lisa Marie Presley, were two of the most searched terms Tuesday afternoon. The collection of search queries that people type into Google has been called a “database of intentions” since it is a window into what people are interested in and, sometimes, what they are interested in buying. Insights allows anyone to analyze the results in much greater detail than Trends does. Users can slice the data by categories to distinguish, for example, searches for Apple the company and apple the fruit. “If you are the head of the Washington apple growers association, you may be interested in this,” said Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist. Users can also slice the data into finer geographic areas than with Trends and view it on a map. And they can download the data onto spreadsheets to compare it to their own forecasts or research.

The tool is aimed primarily at marketers, who may use it to devise and track advertising campaigns. A car company, for instance, could experiment with different versions of a television ad in Cleveland and Columbus, and check the number of resulting searches in each city to see which one is more effective. Or it could use the data to find out where users are searching most actively for “fuel efficiency” and aim ads for a gas-sipping vehicle there. “It gives you much better insights in terms of what’s happening on a geographic basis, potentially allowing advertisers to target geographically,” said Danny Sullivan, the editor of Search Engine Land. Mr. Sullivan said Google has long given marketers the ability to target ads geographically, but not the tools to learn how to do it most effectively. Grant Prentice, director of connections research and analytics at Starcom MediaVest Group, said his company uses Google Trends to help devise strategies to reach consumers online and offline. “We have been using it as a research tool to give us some insight into the relative importance of different terms that people may be using to search on a particular subject,” he said. Mr. Varian said that while Insights was developed with marketers in mind, the economist hopes it will also be used by others. “We are also very interested in uses like the economic forecasting, finance, sociological studies, even in etymological studies to track how new words spread in the population,” Mr. Varian said. Researchers who track activity in various sectors of the economy could use Insights to get a quick snapshot of the volume of searches for terms related to that sector and get a sense of whether economic activity in that sector is increasing or decreasing.

For instance, Insight shows that searches related to home inspections and appraisals in the real estate category rose sharply nationwide in the second half of July. That might suggest to forecasters — as well as marketers — that the residential real estate market is showing signs of life. Of course, searches for foreclosures were also up sharply.