June 2012

Best Practice Briefing

How to Use Google Insights as a Research Tool

Google Insights is a free tool from Google that allows users to track interest in a topic over time, or across locations, or in comparison with other topics. There are limits to its usefulness, but it can be a great starting place in an investigation.

1. What is Google Insights?

http://www.google.com/insights/search/

Every time somebody searches for something on Google, for example if they search for references to

“Vision Critical” the string “Vision Critical” is stored in Google’s database, along with the date and the

location of the person requesting the search.

For example, in the chart below (Chart 1) the line reflects the popularity of typing iPhone into Google. This

chart looks at the global database, from September 2006 to May 2012.means.

Chart 1, Google Insights, Worldwide search.

In Chart 1, the line shows that there were relatively few searches for iPhone towards the end of 2006, but

thereafter the line grows strongly, with peaks in 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011. The 2011 peak corresponds

with the launch of iPhone 4S, just as the peak in 2010 was the iPhone 4. (There is a note at the end of

this article explaining what the numbers mean).

Google Insights offer some help in assessing what caused the changes in the line. By clicking News

Headlines box a list of headlines are listed to the right of the chart. Further down the page there is a list of

search terms used and a list of rising searches, clicking on these drills down further into the data.

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Best Practice Briefing

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2. What can you do with Google Insights?

There are three ways to configure searches in Google insights, by key words, by time, and by location.

These three are explained in the following three sections.

Searching by Key Words

Google Insights allows a comparative set of key words to be searched, for a specific geography for a

specific period of time. For example, the chart below (Chart 2) shows the words Facebook, MySpace,

Twitter, and Pinterest, in the context of the USA from 2006 to 2012. In conducting this search the user is

using Google searches as a proxy for interest in, i.e. if lots of people are searching for a particular term,

then there is lots of interest in it at that time.

Chart 2, Google Insights, 2006 to 2012, searching for Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and Pinterest.

Chart 2 shows that in 2006, 2007, and 2008 MySpace was ahead of Facebook and growing, but from

2009 Facebook comes to the fore. Later on, Twitter and Pinterest come on the scene and overhaul

MySpace, but presenting no challenge to the popularity of searches about Facebook.

Searching by Time

Google Insights allow the user to compare a single search across different periods of time. The chart

below (Chart 3) shows the word biscuit in Australia.

Chart 3, Google Insights, Australia, searching for Biscuits for 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011.

The chart shows a small spike in December, related to biscuits at Christmas. The larger spike, in April,

relates to Anzac biscuits, a biscuit associated with Anzac Day.

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Searching by Location

The third option is to compare locations, holding the search term and the time frame constant. In the chart

below (Chart 4), the word Samsung is compared for France, Germany, UK, and United States.

Chart 4, Google Insights, Samsung, for France, Germany, UK, and United States.

The chart shows that interest in Samsung (as measured by the proxy of Google searches) is lower in the

USA. In 2004 the scores for Samsung were very similar for UK, France, and Germany. From about 2009

the Samsung scores for Germany pull away from those of France and UK.

3. Meaning and Limitations

The limitations of Google Insights

Although Google Insights is very powerful (and free) it does have a number of limitations. The most

important two are:

I. Only countries where there are sufficient users of Google produce reliable results. For most

of the larger, more developed countries, there are no problems but for some of the smaller

countries tend to produce lumpy results, because there are too few people using Google in

those countries.

II. Only words that are unambiguous are searchable. For example, iPad is fine, but Apple is

more of a problem as it also refers to the fruit. Nokia is very searchable as is Vodafone, but

brands such as Orange and Virgin are too ambiguous.

Another limitation is that it can sometimes be a bit tricky to find out what was driving a specific spike in the

data.

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What the numbers mean

Any internet based measurement is confronted by the problem that the number of users has been

growing month by month, making simple comparisons based on absolute numbers unsuitable. Google

creates

This means that all searches only make sense an index in approximately the following way:

a) For each of the search terms being tested, calculate the proportion of all searches for that

date.

b) The highest proportion for any of the key words, for any of the dates, for any of the

locations in the search is set to 100.

c) All other proportions are scaled between 0 and 100.

This means that all searches only make sense in terms of the words, times, and locations in that specific

search. Change any item and the scaling changes.

Prepared for

Vision Critical University Prepared by Ray Poynter, Director, Vision Critical University

Ray is the author of The Handbook of Online and Social Media Research, the creator of NewMR.org, and is in constant demand as a conference speaker, contributing author, workshop leader, and advisor. Ray describes his role in Vision Critical as chief noisemaker and iconoclast.

For more information www.visioncritical.com www.visioncriticaluniversity.com email university@visioncritical.com twitter @visioncritical North America: +1 877 669 8895 UK: +144 (0) 20 7633 2900 Australia: +61 (1) 9256 2000 Hong Kong: +852 3602 2107