Friday August 17th, 2007
The web has lots of powerful tools you can put to use in ways you mightn’t think. One of those we use here is Google Trends which allows you to map the volume of searches done on specific terms against each other.
For example when naming the PPI reclaiming article – I wasn’t sure if people would know what PPI was compared to loan insurance – so I mapped to two terms out and saw that PPI was more commonly searched, thus indicating people would know and it was correct to call it that.
Yet there’s a rather fun by-product to this technology. You can map different celebrities against each other and see who’s most commonly searched.
How to do it
To do it, separate the terms by commas e.g. Tony Blair, Gordon Brown. The resultant graph shows you the relative amounts they’ve been searched over time. Though do ensure you check whether you’re just comparing it in the UK or across the world - it makes a big difference.
Therefore you can put in two (or three or four or five) names and map them out. It’s worth noting Google tends to update its trends system in chunks, so the last date searched may be a month or two out of date.
Some of you may remember the Google Fight website which is a fun tool that does something similar, mapping out the number of times a phrase is mentioned on the web. Yet this one is for searches and moves over time, making it more accurate and relevant.
Do try it and report any fun discoveries or searches you’ve done
