Google Insights For Search Adds Valuable New Features

Mar 24, 2009 at 2:10pm ET by Matt McGee

Three new features just announced this week will make the already valuable Google Insights for Search an even stronger keyword research tool.

Here’s a look at what’s been added:

1.) New data sources

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In addition to web search, you can now do keyword research for Image, News, and Product search, too. This opens up new opportunities for different types of web sites to do more specific data mining.

2.) Category suggestions

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The addition of categories lets you compare your keywords to similarly-themed keywords. You can chart growth over time of a keyword compared to a larger category. For example, after clicking on the “real estate” category in the example above, Insights charts the dramatic rise in searches for “foreclosure” in the past year as compared to the overall “real estate” category.

3.) U.S. metros

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You can more easily drill-down into pre-selected metro areas across the U.S. Whenever any search engine or search tool promises geo-capabilities like this, I always assume it’ll only include bigger cities. But, lo and behold, Insights even includes my (reasonably) little Yakima-Pasco DMA. (Note to Google: Those of us in the Tri-Cities generally don’t like to be included with Yakima like this.)

For more about the new features, see the official announcements on Inside AdWords and the Google News blog.

Matt McGee is the Search Engine Land Assignment Editor, and offers search marketing consulting and training to businesses of all sizes. He blogs at Small Business Search Marketing and HyperlocalBlogger.com.

See more articles by Matt McGee >

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