Google Has Enough Insight to Read My Mind

When I had my first taste of Google Trends, I liked it. Clear information, which Google has always excelled at, and helpful data to build paid search campaigns. Now, Google has copied Trends, given it some additional information, and relabeled as Google Insights.

Google Insights incorporates the geographic and trending information of Google Trends with related search terms and new data, titled Rising Searches, which shows a growing trend for a specific keyword.

I don’t want to continue riding the privacy bandwagon from my last StraightUpSearch post, so I’m going to avoid that aspect completely. But, I can’t help speculate on where Google gets this information from. Is it coming from Google Analytics or direct from users? Okay. I’m done with it.

My initial impression of Google Insights is that this is going to be pretty useful. Data manipulation using date ranges and locations will allow for some deep digging and targeted information. I like to usually jump in right away and see what these tools do, but Google itself is the real master here. I’ve learned to check out the examples Google provides first, as they tend to shed light on the really powerful features.

One set back with Insights is that Google still uses only an index and percentage to give you an idea of traffic levels. I can understand that they may not want to give those numbers out, as it would probably be more difficult to organize and present the data in a simplified manner.

Or is Google just playing hard-to-get? No, they are playing it safe. At the bottom of the Insights, it states the following:

Google Insights for Search aims to provide insights into broad search patterns. Several approximations are used to compute these results.

There is a different purpose here than most would hope for. Broad search patterns are still helpful, I guess. As search marketers though, we all hope for the tool that will give us the most accurate data.

Personally, I think Google should create a new division, similar to Google Analytics and Google AdWords, totally dedicated to search patterns and keyword research. I don’t think they’ll actually do this anytime soon, though. Google has always done whatever Google wants to do, and we’ll have to wait patiently until then.