joshclarkson.net

When it comes to search, you know Google is king.   Now with a new tool “Google Insights for Search“, they allow you a more in depth view of keywords.  Displayed in geographical, timeline, and categorical graphs, Insights gives you a versatile and granular view of how people are searching for terms.  In the image shown here the search for the keyword “Google Insights” is centered in California (no brainer there huh?).  But what’s really cool is that if the term is oft used enough you can even drill down to the level of cities.   The Timeline graph shows views much like those you could get in Google Trends, with less emphasis on the news references.  Rising searches in relation to the ones you searched for and the in depth regional views are the most revealing of all.  Within a search for baseball and basketball for instance; it’s apparent that Kentucky, Indiana, Kansas, and North Carolina top the states that care the most for basketball, and that the top state searching for baseball, Missouri has its most searches coming from the city of St. Louis.  This information could provide some really competitive advantages to companies and persons who will choose to pay attention.  The metadata is becoming more and more important to our daily lives, as companies like google learn to organize and present it to us in such a useful way as this.