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About Peter Sundstrom

Peter Sundstrom has been a member since March 16th 2010, and has created 49 posts from scratch.

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This Author's Website is http://ultimatemarketingstrategies.net

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Private Google Searches

published Monday, May 14th, 2012 at 12:47 pm by

Google PrivacyThere are a number of legitimate reasons why you want to perform Google searches with privacy.

Just because you don’t want Google tracking your searches, doesn’t mean you are up to something bad like looking for illegal software or spamming purposes.

This article covers why it is a good idea to not let Google have access to your search history and how best to perform private Google searches.

 

Unbiased Google Searches

I’m sure most of you will have had an experience where you have searched for a particular keyword you are trying to rank for and thought you were ranking very well.   That is, until you got someone else to search for the same keyword and discovered that it was actually ranked way lower than you initially thought.

The reason this happens, is that Google will bias your search results based on previous searches.   That means if you are searching for a particular keyword multiple times and clicking onto your site, Google assumes that the site you are clicking on is more relevant to your query and will place it higher up in the search results next time you do the same search.

This is particularly this case if you perform your Google searches while you are logged into your Google account.   However, even if you aren’t logged in, Google still tracks some of your searches via cookies and IP address.

There are various approaches you can use with varying degrees of success, such as:

  • Clearing your browser cache and cookie history
  • Using “private mode” setting in your browser
  • Using a different browser from the main one you use for most of your searches
  • Using Chrome incognito browsing mode (do you really trust Google to make a browser that hides 100% of the data from itself?)

While the above methods are OK, they can be a bit of a hassle to do every time you want to do a search.

In the past, I used a site called Scroogle.  This site allowed you to do anonymous and unbiased Google searches with no privacy concerns.

Unfortunately, Scroogle was closed down in early 2012, which left a lot of people looking for an alternative service.

 

Startpage

I only recently came across a site that is quite similar to Scroogle, but has been around for quite a while.

Startpage has a very similar look to Google and allows you to perform Google searches with no cookies or IP address being tracked by Google.   You can read the full Startpage privacy policy here.

I should point out in case there’s any confusion, that startpage.com and ixquick.com are the same sites except with a different logo.

The following extract is from the Startpage company background:

Startpage was released in 2009 in the United States as a new name for the Ixquick search engine. Because the name Ixquick can be somewhat difficult to remember and spell, people asked us for an easier name, and we were happy to oblige. Startpage uses Ixquick’s search methodologies and privacy features, and is governed by the same privacy policies. Startpage is only available in the English language at present, but we expect to launch Startpage in additional major languages later in 2010.

 

Startpage screenshot

 

Startpage uses SSL by default (ie: https://), so that means that all your searches are encrypted, which gives you another level of privacy.As

The results page is quite similar to Google results page, with some minor differences:

  • Startpage returns just websites, whereas Google results can include videos, Google Places etc in the results.
  • Startpage doesn’t display Google Ads, but display their own version of Ads (which is how they fund the service).
  • Startpage has a minimal number of options in the left sidebar (which is a good thing), compared to the ever growing list that Google displays.

 

The following two screenshots show the results page for “dog training” from Startpage and Google.

Please note that as I’m based in New Zealand, both results are querying google.co.nz (more on geo-location in the next section).

Also note that I use an Adblocker, so the screenshots don’t show any Ads.

 

Startpage Search Results

Startpage results for dog training

 

Google Search Results

Google results for dog training

 

Startpage Video Overview

If you prefer the visual medium, the video below I made gives you an overview on using Startpage.

 

 

Anonymous Web Browsing

When you look at the Startpage search results, you will see a link titled: View by Ixquick Proxy

This allows you to view the particular web page via the Ixquick Proxy.   This allows you to view web pages completely anonymously as the website can’t set any cookies or use any other tracking methods to identify you.

There are some limitations with using the proxy, such as:

  • Slower performance
  • Javascript is disabled (which can be a good thing if there is malicious Javascript on the web page you are viewing)

The following short video gives a good overview of the Ixquick Proxy and how it helps your privacy.

 

 

 

Geo-Location Searches

As I previously mentioned, I’m based in New Zealand, but a lot of my marketing sites are targeting the US audience.   One aspect of Scroogle I liked, was to be able to see US results for my searches.

If I want to do a Google US search, I can simply go to google.com and type in my search query.   Note that in the past, if you typed in google.com, Google would automatically redirect you to your local Google site, but this is no longer the behavour.

As you’ve probably seen from the Startpage screenshot, the results are coming from my local Google location, ie: New Zealand.

On the Startpage Privacy Q&A page, it states:

Q: Where are Startpage’s servers located? Startpage has server clusters in the Netherlands and the United States. Startpage typically routes European searches to the European servers, American searches to the U.S. servers, and searches from other countries to the closest location. On the rare occasion that there is a problem in one facility, searches are briefly handled by the other facilty.

 

If you want to perform a search based on a different region, you can use the Startpage Advanced search options and set the region, eg:

Startpage advanced search options

 

However, I found two issues doing this:

  1. You can’t do a default broad match search.  You need to redo the search query once you are on the search results page.
  2. More importantly, I couldn’t get similar results between Startpage and Google when doing US based searches.   I don’t expect the results to be completely the same due to a whole range of variants, but the results I was seeing were quite different and I couldn’t account for the differences.

 

In Summary

Startpage is great resource to use if you value your privacy when you perform Google searches and need to do anonymous web browsing.  

It is also a good resource if you want to check unbiased local searches, but don’t rely on it for search result positions outside your region.

 

Cheers

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An Obsession With PageRank

published Monday, April 30th, 2012 at 12:03 pm by

Google PageRank ObsessionOn the various marketing forums I read, I see the same questions about PageRank coming up over and over.

The question asked is:

How do I increase my PageRank?

At first glance, this might seem like a reasonable question, until you start to delve a little deeper into the reasons why the question is asked so many times.

In this article, I’ll be looking at those reasons and some of the misconceptions and myths surrounding PageRank.

 

What is PageRank?

Firstly, let’s briefly go over what PageRank is.

Put simply, PageRank is a number from 0-10 that indicates the importance or popularity of a particular page.   PageRank is increased based on number of links to a page, but more importantly, high quality backlinks, ie:  backlinks from authority sites with pages that already have PageRank.

The PageRank score is publicly updated a few times a year (typically four).

If you want to bore yourself with all the gory details as to how PageRank is calculated, then the Wikipedia description of PageRank is a good place to start.

Wikipedia PageRank Example

Wikipedia PageRank Example

 

Why Would You Want To Increase Your PageRank?

The first thing I ask when someone post on a forum that they want to know how to increase their PageRank, is why?

Quite often, the answer is along the lines of:

  • I need to increase my PageRank to get my site higher in the SERPs.
  • I don’t really know, but I’ve been told that PageRank is very important.
  • I want to increase traffic to my site.

These are all invalid reasons, because increasing PageRank has little to do with how well your site ranks or how much traffic it receives.

This a major misconception regarding PageRank.   PageRank is really only a factor for the pages that link to your site.

For example, if you have one backlink from a page with no PageRank and one backlink from a page with a PageRank of 5, then the backlink from the page with PageRank is going to be more useful for helping your rankings.

I should point out that the above example is very simplistic as there are a whole range of factors that come into play, such as:

  • Site authority
  • No-follow links
  • Number of outbound links
  • Contextual backlinks
  • Backlink relevance
  • Anchor text

In general, it is better to receive backlinks from pages with PageRank.

So what would be some valid reasons to want to increase your PageRank?

The two main reasons for wanting a higher PageRank are:

  1. Flipping (selling) your site.   Sites that have pages with some PageRank generally sell better than sites without PageRank.
  2. Building a private blog network.   The idea is that by increasing PageRank, you can pass the link juice onto the various sites you are wanting to improve the ranking on.

 

Faked PageRank

You need to be aware that due to the obsession that a lot of people have with PageRank, many pages have faked PageRank.  The reasons for faking PageRank is people who want to flip their site (typically on flippa.com)  for an inflated figure or are selling backlink services where you pay a fee to have a link to your site on a page with PageRank.

PageRank is very easy to fake.   There are two main methods:

  1. Set up a 301 redirect to an existing page with PageRank and after the PageRank score is updated, the redirect is removed.
  2. Install a script detects if the request has come from a Googlebot then do a 301 redirect to a page with PageRank, otherwise display the webpage of the site to human visitors.

Both these methods are quite easy to detect using any number of the fake PR checkers that are available, or by doing a simple Google query:

info:domainname

If the result shows a different domain, then the PageRank has been faked.    There is a fuller explanation of this method  in my Google Tips & Tricks article.

Recently, there has been new method of faking PR that passes all the fake PR checks.   I’m not entirely sure how this new method works, but applying common sense, it is very easy to detect the obvious ones.

For example, recently someone posted a link to a WordPress blog where the homepage had a PR10.

As you probably know, PR10 is the highest score and google.com only has a PR9.  In fact, there are only a very small number of pages with a valid PR10.

Search Engine Genie has a list of PR10 pages, which currently totals only 10 sites.

This particular WordPress blog was only 2 months old and had a very small handful of backlinks.   A brief look at the site, without even checking the backlink details should have instantly set off warning bells that it had faked PR.

Now it’s quite possible if the owner of the site hadn’t been so “greedy” and had faked a more realistic score like PR4-PR6, then most people wouldn’t have given it much scrutiny.

 

PageRank Misconceptions

By far the biggest misconception with PageRank is many people think a site/domain has PageRank.

You see it all the time when people talk about how their site has PR or selling a domain with PR.

PageRank is referring to a specific page.   Pages have PageRank, not sites.

Now, it’s no coincidence that the page with the highest PageRank on most sites is the homepage.   So when most people talk about their site having PR, they are actually referring to the PR of their homepage.

 

The other major misconception as previously mentioned is that PR on your site will increase your rankings.    It is true that if you have a page with PR, then it has gained that PR from backlinks, which is an important factor for improving your rankings, but it doesn’t automatically give your site a boost.

You can see plenty of search queries where a low PR page will outrank a high PR page.   That’s because there are many factors involved in rankings, such as on-page SEO (which PR has nothing to do with).

 

Should I Worry About PageRank?

worry

Bottom line is that way too much time is spent on worry about PageRank and on methods to increase it.

You are much better off spending your time writing articles and promoting your sites.

If your pages gain PR, you can briefly bask in the warm inner glow of satisfaction and then move onto more important matters.

 

Cheers

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Google Tips and Tricks

published Monday, April 2nd, 2012 at 1:53 pm by

Google Tips and TricksI thought it would be a great idea to put together a collection of my best Google tips and tricks to make the most of Google for your market research and SEO work.

While we all use Google everyday in some capacity, whether it be simple searches or doing keyword research with Google Adwords Keyword Tool, there are quite a few hidden corners to Google (that’s definitely an under-statement) that a lot of people don’t know about or don’t know how to use efficiently.  

 

Video Summary

For those of you who prefer the visual medium, the video below covers most of the Google tips listed in this article.

 

 

Advanced Search Queries

The following collection of advanced search queries have a range of uses from keyword research to analysis of your website.

The first search query we’ll examine is the site: operator.  This is very useful for determining:

  • Whether your site has been indexed (particularly useful to know if you have a new site)
  • Conversely, whether your site has been deindexed, aka Google slap, Google Sandbox etc.
  • How many pages are indexed.   This is useful to check if a new page has been indexed or not.
  • Whether a the PageRank (PR) for page is faked or not.   Faking PR is quite common when selling a domain/site.

 

Checking If Your Site Is Indexed

An example of checking whether your site is indexed or not, is to just type in your domain with the site operator, eg:

site:example.com

If your site is indexed, Google will report the number of pages it has in it’s index.   If the site is not indexed, it will say something like:

 

Your search – site:example.com – did not match any documents

 

A word of caution!

If your domain has subdomains, eg:

  • blog.example.com
  • store.example.com

then the site: operator will also include those subdomains in the query.

There doesn’t appear to be any easy way of excluding subdomains, unless you manually exclude them, eg:

  

site:example.com -site:blog.example -site:store.example.com

 

You can also check if a specific page has been indexed, eg:

 

 

site:example.com/page1.html

or

site:example.com/category/postname

Another point to keep in mind is whether you use www in front of your domain name or not.   When you are checking your site, make sure you use the format that you normally use.   As most sites have a 301 redirect set up from the non-www to www version of the URL (or vice-versa), you should use the form the redirect points to.

 

 Checking For Fake PageRank

Related to the site: operator is the  info: operator.  This can be used for a number of function, but one very quick and easy method is to check if the PR for a particular page is faked or not.  The most common way of faking PR is by doing a 301 redirect from another page with PR to the target page.

This technique is sometimes used when people are selling a website or a domain and they artificially inflate the PR during the selling process and when the site/domain has been sold, the redirect is removed and when Google releases the next PR update, the new owner suddenly finds their PR has vanished.

There are a number of ways of checking for fake PR, but the quickest is to simply query the page (in most cases, it will be the homepage), eg:

 

info:example.com

 

If Google then shows you a result that has a different domain, you can very confident the site has a faked PR.

 

Checking The Actual Number Of Results Returned

Whenever you do a Google search, Google will give you a number (generally quite large) with the number of results.   It’s important to understand that this is just an estimate by Google in order to speed up how quickly they can display the results for your search query.

The following quote is from the Google Webmaster Tools Help.

When you perform a search, the results are often displayed with the information: About XXXX results (X seconds).

Google’s calculation of the total number of search results is an estimate. We understand that a ballpark figure is valuable, and by providing an estimate rather than an exact account, we can return quality search results faster.

In addition, when you click on the next page of search results, the total number of search results can change. Google’s search index is constantly changing, and your second search results page may come from a slightly different version of the index than the first page.

 

As you probably know, Google will return a maximum of 1000 results.   However, in most cases it is much fewer than 1000, because Google will filter out most of the duplicate content and pages that have low relevance.  That means, if there are more pages of relevance for your search term, the higher the number of actual results.

This metric can be used as a factor for gauging competition for ranking for a particular keyword, although I would caution that you shouldn’t use it as your sole metric.   You are much better off doing a full analysis (on-page and off-page SEO) of the top 10 results to get a much better idea of the real competition, but looking at the number of actual results returned can still be useful.

OK, let’s take an example.

 

If I search for:

front loading washing machines

 

Google tells me:

About 2,8700,000 results (0.16 seconds)

 

Note that you’ll most likely get slightly different figures depend on when and where you do the same search from, but it should be roughly around the 2-3 million results.

Now, if we were to click on the Next button at the bottom of the results until we got to the very last page (that’s a lot of clicks), you will see a message like:

 

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 592 already displayed.

If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

 

What that means is that of the 2.8 million results that Google estimated were related to your search term, only 592 were worth displaying.

Obviously you are quickly going to get very sick of clicking, Next, Next, Next…….

The quick way to get to the last page of the results is to modify the search URL. 

When you do your initial query, the URL in your browser will look something like:

 

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&sclient=psy-ab&q=front+loading+washing+machines&oq=front+loading+washing+machines&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_l=hp.12…0l0l6l23123l0l0l0l0l0l0l0l0ll0l0.frgbld.&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=fb944df5651897fd&biw=1920&bih=1066

To get to the last page of the search results add:

start=990&

anywhere in the URL after the first &, eg:

 

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&start=990&sclient=psy-ab&q=front+loading+washing+machines&oq=front+loading+washing+machines&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_l=hp.12…0l0l6l23123l0l0l0l0l0l0l0l0ll0l0.frgbld.&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=fb944df5651897fd&biw=1920&bih=1066

then press Enter and hey presto, you’ll be taken to the last page.

 

Querying US Search Results Outside the US

I live in New Zealand, but most of my sites target US audiences.   If I type in google.com into my browser, Google detects that I’m from New Zealand and will automatically redirect to google.co.nz

Doing a search on google.co.nz is biased towards New Zealand sites, which is generally not what I want.   To query the Google US results, simple add /ncr (which stands for “no country redirect”) at the end of the URL, eg:

 

http://google.com/ncr

 

 

Performing a Non-Personalized Search

As you probably know,  Google  personalizes your search results based on your search history.   This mostly applies if you are logged into your Google account.

If you don’t want to log out of your Google account when you do a search, just add

 

&pws=0

 

to the search URL in your browser bar.  For example:

 

 

https://www.google.com/?q=onpage+seo+plugins&pws=0

 

You can also use Chrome in “Incognito” mode, which is supposed to remove traces of your search history and cookies.

Note, that none of these techniques will give you 100% guaranteed non-personalized results, but for most cases, they should be sufficient.

Scroogle.org used to be a great resource for getting unbiased Google searches, but unfortunately the site closed down in Jan 2012.

 

Using Google Cached Results

It can be very useful to know when Google last indexed a specific page.   Google keeps a cached copy of your pages in order to speed up processing search results.

To view the Google cache details for a particular page, use the query:

 

 

cache:example.com/page.html

 

Google will display the cached version of the page along with an information area at the top of the screen that will say something like:

 

This is Google’s cache of http://example.com/page.html.  It is a snapshot of the page as it appeared on 31 Mar 2012 13:38 GMT.  The current page could have changed in the meantime.

 

Another very useful tip that not many people use is the link to the “Text-only version” of the cache.  

If your site uses a lot of graphics and/or has a complex design, viewing the text only version of the cache gives you an inside view as to how the Googlebots see your page.   This can often be very revealing and may give you some big clues as to how to rearrange your site in order for it to be better optimized for Google when it next crawls your site.

 

Handy Google Links

Google has so many products these days, but as an online marketer, there are generally a small handful of links that you will use most of the time.

The following is a list of what I consider to be the most useful Google functions:

 

https://adwords.google.com

Without a doubt, this is the number one tool used by online marketers for keyword research and Adwords campaigns.  

You actually have access to a number of related tools from this URL.  The two most useful are:

1.  Keyword Tool – Invaluable for keyword research

2. Contextual Targeting Tool – If you are monetizing via Adsense, then using the contextual targeting tool will give you a much more accurate idea of the CPC.

 

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

Google Insights For Search is essentially a more advanced version of Google Trends.  It’s a great tool to use with your keyword research as it can tell you things like whether the keywords you are interested in are suitable for your targeted region or whether the keywords are seasonal or on a downward or upward search trend.

I wrote a post about Google Insights and the importance of trends in keyword research that has more details on the uses for Google Insights.

 

https://developers.google.com/pagespeed/

The load time of your site is one of the factors that Google takes into consideration, therefore it is important to ensure your site loads as fast as possible.

The Google Page Speed Test will not only test your page load times, it will give you a list of suggestions on how to improve the performance of your site.

 

 

If you know of any other handy Google tips, tricks or techniques, please leave a comment below.

 

Cheers

 

 

 

 

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Key Points Of The Google Panda 3.3 Update

published Tuesday, February 28th, 2012 at 2:19 pm by

Google Panda 3.3 UpdateGoogle has announced one of their biggest set of changes to their search algorithms in their Google Inside Search Blog on the 27th Feb 2012.

The changes that were mostly rolled out at the start of February are also known as Google Panda 3.3 update.

There are 40 changes listed on the Inside Search Blog post.   Not all of them are very important from an SEO point of view, but there are some changes that are quite significant.

In this article, I’ll be giving you my opinions on the impact of the key points of the Panda 3.3 update

 

 

Panda 3.3 Key Points

Note that Google will never reveal the exact details of their changes, so there is a certain amount of guess work and reading between the lines with the information they have provided.

 

More accurate detection of official pages. [launch codename “WRE”] We’ve made an adjustment to how we detect official pages to make more accurate identifications. The result is that many pages that were previously misidentified as official will no longer be.

 

This description is a little vague as it depends on what Google’s definition of “official” is, but presumably it means that sites that target brand names or trademarks will no longer be given a boost in the rankings from a misidentified “official” status.

 

Disabling two old fresh query classifiers. [launch codename “Mango”, project codename “Freshness”] As search evolves and new signals and classifiers are applied to rank search results, sometimes old algorithms get outdated. This improvement disables two old classifiers related to query freshness.

Improvements to freshness. [launch codename “iotfreshweb”, project codename “Freshness”] We’ve applied new signals which help us surface fresh content in our results even more quickly than before.

 

It’s well known since the first Panda update that freshness is an important factor for a lot of sites to rank well.   It’s impossible to say what the old classifiers are, but my guess is they are related to auto-content.

 

Improvements to travel-related searches. [launch codename “nesehorn”] We’ve made improvements to triggering for a variety of flight-related search queries. These changes improve the user experience for our Flight Search feature with users getting more accurate flight results.

 

It doesn’t appear to be a coincidence that the new Flight Search feature (first introduced in Dec 2011) appears to favour the major airlines, rather than the smaller carriers or travel agents.

 

Improvements to ranking for local search results. [launch codename “Venice”] This improvement improves the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of our main search results as a signal.

Improved local results. We launched a new system to find results from a user’s city more reliably. Now we’re better able to detect when both queries and documents are local to the user.

 

What this means is that Google will show more local results for various queries, eg: doctors, restaurants, movies etc as they are able to better detect what location the searcher is in.

 

Link evaluation. We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page. We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years. We often rearchitect or turn off parts of our scoring in order to keep our system maintainable, clean and understandable.

 

This is probably one of the biggest and most important updates.  Again, it’s very hard to know exactly what methods of link analysis that they’ve turned off.  

Reading between the lines, it is possible that Google is going to place less importance on the anchor text and more importance on where the link comes from.  Presumably this will benefit sites with contextual links from sites that have related topics to the site where the backlink is pointing.

 

So What Does It All Mean?

The most important thing to remember is that every Google update is not “The End Of The World For SEO” or “Google Hates Us”.

Google are always going to be tweaking the way they calculate the search results.

The bottom line is if you have a diverse set of non-spammy backlinking sources and a good mix of social media (eg: Google Plus, FaceBook, Twitter etc), then it’s more than likely you won’t notice much different in your website rankings.

 

Cheers

 

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The Importance of Trends In Keyword Research

published Thursday, February 16th, 2012 at 1:59 pm by

Trends In Keyword ResearchI was recently doing some keyword research when I thought I’d come across a really good keyword for a new Amazon store that I’d been planning on building.

However, after checking the search trends (in particular the regional differences), I quickly realized that the keyword was nowhere as good as I initially thought it was.

Given that keyword research is the foundation for any site, I think trend and regional data are often overlooked in the whole keyword research process.

In this article, I’ll go through why analysing trend and regional data is a very important part of keyword research and why you shouldn’t ignore it.

 

 

Video Summary

For those of you that prefer a visual medium, the video below covers most of what is written in this article.

 

 

Keyword Research Case Studies

I’ve had good success with Amazon stores and I was looking to get into the baby product market as that can a potentially very lucrative market to be in.  

As a father, I recall just how much stuff you end up buying when you have a baby, so it seemed like a great market to tap into.

I use SECockpit for my keyword research as I can process huge amounts of keywords in a very short space of time.   Generally, I always leave the location set to “All countries and territories”.

After using a few general seed keywords such as baby and baby products, I saw what looked like a very promising keyword as you can see in the screenshot below:

 SECockpit Baby Keywords Screenshot

The keyword baby bunting really stood out with 49500 exact monthly searches and lowish competition and with appropriate products available on Amazon.

When I looked at the keyword in more detail, I decided to check it out in Google Insights.  One quick glance at the data, told me instantly that this wasn’t a suitable keyword to target after all.

If you look at the Google Insights screenshot below:

 

Google Insights

you’ll see that while the trend data is very steady, under the Regional interest section, it shows that baby bunting is by far and away mostly used in Australia.

Amazon doesn’t have an Australian presence and all my Amazon stores are targeting the US market, so targeting  baby bunting really wasn’t going to be worth my while.

Now, what I really should have done from the beginning was to set my search location to be United States and I wouldn’t have wasted a few minutes checking out a keyword that wasn’t very worthwhile.    That’s certainly something I don’t forget to do now when doing keyword research for Amazon products.

Obviously, not everyone uses SECockpit, so let’s have a look at the data if we were using Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

In the following screen shot, you can see I’ve set my location to be United States and Match types to exact.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool

You can see that search figures are:

Global Monthly Searches (GMS): 49,500

Local Monthly Searches (LMS): 1,900

 

That’s a huge difference between the global and the local monthly figures as was clearly indicated in the Google Insights regional data.

Now the main reason for the difference is that baby bunting just isn’t a very common term in the US, whereas in Australia it’s a term commonly used.

As I don’t live in the US, I try to keep in mind the differences between terms in the US and other English speaking countries, but I don’t know them all.

 

I’ll give you another classic example of a huge difference in search volume between the global and US local monthly figures.

In the screenshot below, you can see that the keyword car hifi gets:

Global Monthly Searches (GMS): 18,100

Local Monthly Searches (LMS): 91

 

Google Adwords Keyword Tool

 

Now let’s look at the Google Insights data for car hifi

 

Google Insights

Here you can see that the United States doesn’t even make it into the list of countries under regional interest.   Clearly car hifi is a term most common in Europe, UK and Australia.

 

Trend Data

While it might be obvious to some people that you should choose a keyword where the search volume isn’t on a downward trend, it’s still a step missed by a lot of people.

In general, you always want to ensure that your keyword has a steady or rising search trend.

The following graph from Google Insights shows the search trend for baby bunting from 2004 onwards.

Google Trends

 As you can see from mid 2010 onwards, there is a very nice upward trend.   However, you recall previously, this keyword would currently only be suitable to target an Australia audience.

 

The same principle applies to seasonal trends, eg: Christmas, Valentines Day, Halloween etc.

The following graph shows the trend data for the term christmas gifts:

 

Google Trends

As you can see, there is an obvious peak over the Christmas period, but apart from 2004 and 2005, the peaks from 2006 onwards are all pretty much consistent, so you could classify this as a steady trend.

 

Taking a look at the other side, there are two main reasons for a declining search trend.

1.  A term that slowly declines due to waning interest or being superseded by something else.

2.  A short term fad where there is a big spike in popularity followed by a sharp decline.

 

An example of a search trend that are slowly declining are technology products that are becoming redundant, eg: VCR player, pager and fax machine

An example of a fad is myspace.   The following search trend graph illustrates very clearly the impact that Facebook had on myspace.

 

Google Trends

 

The Exceptions

There are a few exceptions to the cases I’ve already written about.

Sometimes, you don’t need to be so concerned with regional differences if the product or service you are promoting has a wide appeal across many countries.  Examples of this are: informational products, software, books and music.

With trend data, it obviously applies to search terms that have been around for a little while, but sometimes you may want to jump onto the bandwagon of some new technology that’s just about to be released but has no historic data to go on.  This is a bit of a gamble, but you can be rewarded for getting in early if it proves to be a very popular piece of technology.

 

Summing It Up

No matter what type of keyword research you are doing, it always pays to spend a short moment checking the trend and regional data.   It takes you very little time and could potentially save you a lot of wasted effort targeting a keyword in the wrong market.

 

 

Cheers

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