Getting to grips with Google search stats to uncover a product opportunity

[Andy Goundry]

Hi everyone,

After an inspiring time in Edinburgh (thanks to everyone involved), i'm trying out some of the ideas we discussed. 

To start, i'm trying out this interesting idea that we discussed: How to use google search stats to discover a business opportunity that has some measurable potential of customer interest. This is partly for learning and fun, but also to try and bootstrap a product company that isn't dependent on an itch that i personally have.

I'm now focusing on http://www.google.com/insights

Please do get in touch if you have any related stories or advice. It's quite possible that insights isn't the right tool at all.

Thanks and all the best,

Andy :)

[George Palmer]

Hi Andy,

I'd consider using Adwords Keyword Tool instead if I were you. This
gives accurate monthly figures and makes suggestions on further
keywords that you can try out. Just be sure to choose "Exact" in the
left hand column before making any decisions based on the numbers you
see.

George

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George Palmer
@georgio_1999
http://www.digitaldeliveryapp.com

[Graham Ashton]

On 2 July 2012 19:35, Andy Goundry <m...@andygoundry.com> wrote:
>
> This is partly for learning and fun, but also to try and bootstrap a product company that isn't dependent on an itch that i personally have.

If you've got an itch to scratch, why not explore the size of that market? Working on things you understand very well is a massive advantage.

On 3 Jul 2012, at 07:51, George Palmer wrote:

> I'd consider using Adwords Keyword Tool instead if I were you. This
> gives accurate monthly figures and makes suggestions on further
> keywords that you can try out.

[Bear in mind in what follows that I haven't used the Adwords tool successfully for product discovery; my perspective comes from having freelanced for a search marketing software tools company for quite some time.]

The Adwords keyword tool is the best free app we've got for gauging search volume, but the figures aren't accurate. At best they're relative.

A problem with the Adwords tool is that Google don't return keywords from the long tail, and it's the long tail that really tells you how big a niche/market is.

By "long tail" I mean all the variations that people type in relating to a topic, from which you can infer lots of juicy info about each user's intent. The Adwords tool sticks to fairly short keywords. There's an example of what this means in this post (search for "Holy cow" and read backwards):

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/be-careful-using-adwords-for-keyword-research

If you create an adwords account and login you get more keywords back.

> Just be sure to choose "Exact" in the left hand column before making any decisions based on the numbers you see.

George - Did you experiment with phrase match? I'd expect it to be rather useful as it includes all the keywords that people have used that contain your phrase, and so includes a significant proportion of the long tail. That's typically a better representation of the size of a niche, especially in smaller markets where a niche's most popular keyword is harder to identify.

I'd do each search twice; once with the exact match modifiers, and again with phrase match modifiers.

[my keyword]
"my keyword"

http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en-GB&answer=2497836&from=6100&rd=1

The smaller your niche (i.e. the longer the keyword) the less useful I'd expect exact match to become. It's good for quickly comparing two large markets to one another, but as your keywords get longer you're better off doing phrase match and adding up the search volume for all the words returned. Adwords don't do this for you, but there are tools out there that do. See the first screenshot here (the red arrow points to the total):

http://www.wordtracker.com/academy/finding-profitable-keywords-just-got-easier/

[Wordtracker is where I worked, which is why I know about that screenshot; I'm not suggesting you sign up]

Don't drop an idea if you can't find demand for it in the Adwords tool. That's not what Google made it for (they made it to increase their bottom line when selling adverts to marketers, which is why it isn't great for discovering what people are actually searching for).

Determining a user's intent from a keyword is also a mine field. The longer the keyword the easier it is to determine a searcher's intent (compare "digital camera" and "nikon d3200 cheapest uk price", only one of which is a "buying keyword"), but Google don't reveal the counts for the ones that represent intent unless you type them in. Thanks Google!

Graham

--
Graham Ashton
Founder, The Agile Planner
http://theagileplanner.com | @agileplanner | @grahamashton

[Matt Wynne]

On 3 Jul 2012, at 10:15, Graham Ashton wrote:

On 2 July 2012 19:35, Andy Goundry <m...@andygoundry.com> wrote:

This is partly for learning and fun, but also to try and bootstrap a product company that isn't dependent on an itch that i personally have.

If you've got an itch to scratch, why not explore the size of that market? Working on things you understand very well is a massive advantage.

This is also what Start Small Stay Small refers to as a 'warm niche'. If your mother-in-law is a dentist, and she says the market leading billing application in that business is crappy, build a billing application for dentists.

cheers,

Matt

--
Freelance programmer & coach
Author, http://pragprog.com/book/hwcuc/the-cucumber-book
Founder, http://www.relishapp.com/
Twitter, https://twitter.com/mattwynne

[George Palmer]

> George - Did you experiment with phrase match? I'd expect it to be rather useful as it includes all the keywords that people have used that contain your phrase, and so includes a significant proportion of the long tail. That's typically a better representation of the size of a niche, especially in smaller markets where a niche's most popular keyword is harder to identify.

Yeah I did but the context I used it in people were looking for others
things with variations of my keywords so I used exact match and just
added the top variations that were applicable to get an idea of
numbers.