Benchmarking with Google Trends

Google Trends is a cool little tool to see the relationship between keyword searches.

However, one of the drawbacks is the lack of any quantifiable data. The line graphs merely show relationship NOT actual volume.

In order to get an idea of what a line on a Google Trends chart represents one must set some benchmarks.

By estimating the volume of searches for a given term, that term can be used as a benchmark to be used against other terms.

Using the free keyword tools provided by Nichebot, Digital Point, SEOToolset, and SEOBook I estimated the traffic for the following keywords: dog food, health food, cat food, fish food and bird food. I choose terms that were relatively simple. And, as it worked out, these terms also provided a nice scale of volume.

On the Google Trends Chart, “dog food” was the most searched. I assigned it a factor of 1. “health food” saw about 75% of the volume of “dog food” so I assigned it a factor of .75. I did this with the other terms in turn.

In my keyword analysis, the most consistent results were produced for “cat food”. Using the “cat food” monthly estimates as my base, I then figured the monthly estimates for the other terms using the factors I had created above. So my benchmarks are as follows (the numbers are monthly estimates):

• dog food – 60000
• health food – 45000
• cat food – 15000
• fish food – 12000
• bird food – 5400

(I realize of course that this methodology is somewhat suspect. The data is from multiple sources so at best this is a guesstimate. No keyword tool is even close to being accurate. Keyword analysis is a guessing game at best.)

Now I have some benchmarks to use when using Google Trends.

For example, I was interested in finding out the approximate number of searches for the term “web browser”.

I typed, “web browser” and “bird food” into Google Trends. The line chart showed “web browser” way above “bird food”. I then typed in “web browser” and “dog food”. The two were pretty close. So I could guess that the number of searches for “web browser” were similar to those for “dog food”: around 60,000 a month.

[tags]google, google+trends, keywords[/tags]