Benchmarking with Google Trends
by Paul Flyer
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]
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Paul, I just received a google alert about Google Trend. I did a search for more imformation regarding Google Trend and came across your reprint article. Very imformative. Could you please drop me an email.
August 16th, 2006 at 6:05 pmDo you know of any way of estimating keyword volume for a geography like India?
August 25th, 2006 at 4:36 pmKingsley,
Great question!
Google states “Google Trends calculates the ratio of searches for your term coming from each city divided by total Google searches coming from the same city”. The same is said for each region. All you can really judge from these graphs is whether a search term is more popular in one area over another. These city/regional graphs represent a ratio within that given region. It answers questions like: For this region, does “dog food” represent a decent size percentage of all the possible google searches coming from this region. We can generate further answers like: yes, this search search term is popular in this region. But answering how popular comparing it to the worldwide total or trying to guesstimate an actual quantitative value is impossible with this tool. I am not aware of any keyword tool that is able to dissect volume by region.
August 30th, 2006 at 9:50 am