How to Crack into Google’s Servers and Find Search Keyword Gold
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Researching keywords for your next blog post, article or site?
I’m going to show you a way to get a peek behind the scenes of the Google search engine and see actual “search keyword” trends. Using these techniques you can discover keywords that you will want to use now!
Sure Google Trends (http://www.google.com/trends/) can help you find the top 100 hot topics but unless you are into top news stories or celebrities it doesn’t always help.
Google has finally let us pull back the curtain and see into the mounds of data that they have been collecting for years using their Google Insights for Search Tool. (http://www.google.com/insights/search/)
This is a keyword researchers dream. Four years of actual search data that you can comb through.
Using the Google Insights tool:
The first thing you should do is to sign in to your Google account at the top of the Insights. This will provide you with a little more detail in the results.
Before I start with an actual example of how to pull some nuggets (keywords) you need to know something about the numbers you are seeing. Google is keeping one thing hidden from us; the actual search volume. The numbers they show are all relative. I explain that more in my example below.
When you first get to the Insights tools you will see a screen like this:
The red arrows point to samples that Google has provided so you can see what the tool can do. I suggest you look at several of those to understand how to you can use the tool.
Lets say you have a tech gadget blog or you are a seller of electronics and you blog about the items you sell. I’m going to enter a search that should be a popular holiday shopping item in this category. That is digital camera. And I’m going to pick only the United States and 2008 so I can get current data.
Google gives digital camera a relative volume of 82. By itself that means nothing but they do provide a graph of the relative volume for 2008. And when you compare that term with another one, let’s say, ummm dairy farm, which is where I think Cow was taken to, you will see how the volumes relate.
Digital camera has a relative search volume of 82 to the 3 of dairy farm. (Wow! That many people are searching about a dairy farm. It must be in the search for Cow.) While diary farm by itself has scores a 78.
Currently with a volume of 82, digitals camera are sitting at its lowest volume period of the year. If you went back and looked at prior years, you would see that there is a huge volume spike in November.
Over the past four years the volume is decreasing. That right there would tell me that this is not a good keyword. It’s a top level category keyword and it’s too generic to be able to use and draw any traffic from.
We need to go deeper into the mine to find the nuggets. Scroll down to the last on the results page. These are the top searches related to your search term and the rising searches. This is where the gold is.
I am going to look the rising searches to try to find a new growing trend.
Looking at that list, two of them quickly caught my eye. Waterproof digital camera and underwater digital camera are two related terms at the top of the rising searches. It seems like we have discovered a sub-niche here.
You can then investigate further by click on the terms. Upon clicking waterproof digital camera I find this:
The first listing is a model of a waterproof camera and Google say this is a breakout term. That is a term that is new for the time period you selected and has a surge in volume.
Now I have a possible idea for my next article.
Olympus Stylus 1030 SW Waterproof Digital Camera Review
Or if you are building a new site, you have a possible niche to work with of waterproof digital cameras.
And the best part of a long tail keyword that is a product, it’s very easy to tie into your store or to an affiliate site like Amazon, eBay, or another affiliate store selling that product.
You can use this same process for any niche you might be working in. It will work the same way. Sometimes you find dead ends, or low volume terms, and many times you find the keyword gold you need.
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I will definitely check it out.. Thanks for the tip
As will I. This will definitely help me out. I’ve never heard of some this stuff. Thanks John!
John, thanks for pointing this out it’s invaluable for web masters to be able to properly track and react to this type of data.
Useful tool, and definitely worth checking out.
One note of caution though – I replicated the searches you outline above, and got totally different results in the rising searches section.
It’s great for getting ideas about what is hot, but the rising search data should be treated with caution, and should probably be cross-referenced against another source before diving head first into a new niche.
Ya, even one letter can change the results a lot. Like digital camera vs digital cameras (plural).
And any difference in the time periods or locations will again change the results.
Jason, your posts are in depth and a great read. Thanks so much for the info.
One word: AWESOME! I didn’t even know about this Google Insights tool before…
Thank you John very interestin article.
http://www.mariolist.com/money
Mario
Excellent advice John, certainly we can see that Google is providing awesome tools for everyone who runs a website and knows about SEO.
Great asset!
wow. i never thought google could be crack:)this are nice tips.
Ronald
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John
Thanks for providing us with this great tool. I have seen it before but never explained like this.
This will benefit all of us that read you blog. Great job.
Thanks for bringing that to my attention, didn’t know anything about the insights tool until I read your post. Seems like something I’ll use a lot.
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Amazing!!
How do you do it John?
Do what?
Im not John but just curious.
[...] John Cow – How to Crack Into Google’s Servers and Find Gold [...]
I think you can also narrow this down by geo-targeting as well. You can see which states in the US are drawing the most for that particular search. This helps if you want to target regional keywords like “corn” for the midwest or “redwood trees” for the West.
Fritz
Definitely a must for ppl like me who’ve waisted tons of $$ on ppc just because my keywords weren’t the best
Great Find and nice tutorial for everyone you rock
Thank you very much John for this tutorial.
Also i asking for permission to relay this tutorial in bahasa indonesia version.
Regards
Man I am freakin slippin! This was a great post, Google has some crazy tools man! But I really love how you explained it…that’s helps out the dummies like me man
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I am new to the blogging for a business game and I love your site. How would you suggest I read your site as a beginner?
Very interesting! I didn’t know of that Google tool…They really have a bunch of tools available it’s incredible. Thanks for sharing that one
I use Google Trends many times, but I still was looking for more powerful tools.
Google Insight is definitely one of those powerful tools. Thanks for sharing.
I am still amazed by the service it provides.
Could this become the single biggest tool for website owners looking to attract visitors?
Been loving insights for a bit but that is an excellent tutorial on how to use it.
This is very helpful info. I knew about most of the Google keyword tools but not insights.
I thought I knew about all the Google tools. How did I miss this one?
Thanks for the heads up on this, and thank you Google for providing more data.
Excellent tip my man, thanks!
Great tip to share!
I love the step by step tutorial you made!
It is crystal clear!
Francesco
Thank you very much for that post I am in the process of doing a video course, and an idea was mulling around in my head, reading your post gave me a way to bring the idea to life in an affordable way! Top Blog.
I had this on my toolbar and knew, sooner or later you’d come through to tell me how to get the most from it
Thanks John
Great Insight on Insights Jason.
This IS a great tool indeed, add this to your research phase. Do not rely on it 100%. Consider it another free Tool out there to use at your disposal.
Cheers!
Thanks,
Sounds great.
Let me try now.
Nice insights into using Google insights
I haven’t been doing this, but should add it to my list of market research steps. Great post… stumbled…
Dear Jason,
This was another excellent post! Thanks to you and the other two for providing these free tips, when you could keep them all in Traffic Kahuna!
nice info.would like to see more tutorials like this.thank you
Awesome app, just added it to my toolbar along with google webmaster, analytics, and of course statcounter
Great post, mootastic
This is a good tool, I’ve been using it for a while.
Great info Jason, I will use this and get some good use out of this. Where do you find this kind of info, seems I find this stuff from guys like you who have already found it!!
Incredible!!
I love this post john, i am going to love this Google insight
Thanks, John Cow. I’ll try it. jooloo :
Thats was nice , will give a try !!
Sweetness, I mean…grrrr, now everyone knows, what have you done?!
Just kidding. Great post again Cow, thanks for the info.
I think maybe you’re on to something with the whole cow and dairy farm thing….
-Shaun
Thanks for the tips Mr. Cow. I’ll definitely be trying it out on my site. But, now could you show us how to do this on yahoo?
Outstanding post John. This is an extremely useful tool, probably invaluable. Thank you very much.
In conjunction with analytics, goals & funnelling, a potent combo, thanks.
Thanks for letting us know about this new Google research tool. Good work, fella.
Thanks for the update on this tool. We looked at it when it was first announced but kind of let it go. This will definitely encourage us to dig around a bit, as well as provide some steps to do it more efficiently.
Thanks!
Ian
SEO Seattle
Thanks for the reminder on this. We looked at it when the tool came out but let it sort of fade into the past. This will surely help us utilize the tool much more efficiently.
Thanks again.
That’s a cool tool. How did you know about this?
[...] How to crack into Google’s servers and find Keyword Gold [...]
OMG Dude, this is great..
I used Google Trends before, but this looks much, much better. Thanks!
Cheers,
Alex
Just learned a few things here.. Good looking out on the info..
Nice Find! Good tool from Google for webmasters!
Yeah, it’s a useful tool, but why not use the keyword tool built into Adwords? It actually DOES show you approximate search volume numbers (instead of mysterious percentages for comparison). It also shows you the estimated monthly search volumes of related keywords.
wow cow…i have never tried this tool yet but now that i’m so eager to that gold online like you guys..i will now try this once i reach home. thanks…
Well this can certainly set things up for me! I did not know that there was such a tool that could be made use of.
Thanks for putting this up!
I did not know that such a tool existed!
Thanks for putting it up, this can really set things up for me!
Content is the king! Key words are the soldiers!
This is also a good check to see how well you have done your research.
That is a really excellent tool. Like all other tools it has to be used with a certain amount of caution and a lot of intelligence but nevertheless it is an excellent tool. The ability to find related key words that get any kind of traffic is a huge benefit.
Thanks John for the tutorial. it really useful. I was using adwords keywords tool for a while now. but google trends and insights has give another option for me.
Holy Cow – Sorry
I can’t believe this. I just dropped on a keyword that has 1900 searches a day and competition of 650 and it took me 2 mins. That’s a very interesting tool. Thanks for sharing.
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Interesting and i normally use another way to fetch this kind a keywords. Anyhow its worth reading
Thank u john.