“With Google I'm starting to burn out on knowing the answer to everything. People in the year 2020 are going to be nostalgic for the sensation of feeling clueless.” -Visual artist, designer and Novelist Douglas Coupland
Better business intelligence is constantly on the mind of entrepreneurs and decision makers all over the world. No matter what industry you are in or what model you operate on, the more you know about your competitor, your customers and your general business environment, the better your business will perform.
Fortunately, the world’s most advanced business intelligence toolkit is at your fingertips via the world’s most commonly visited URL. And while, as Mr. Coupland points out, there may eventually be an urge “for the sensation of feeling clueless”, the information you can pick up from Google tools is the best possible gift for retailers and business leaders of all shapes and sizes.
Here are five ways to begin mastering the Google search on behalf of your business and how each of those ways can lead to immediate, actionable business insights:
#1: Keep an eye on the Autocomplete
Google gives you immediate insights every time you start a Google search. By typing in a single character, you can expect to see a list of potential results. For example, typing the letter “g” yields a dropdown list of the following items: google, gmail, google maps, gogole stranslate, gamestop, google earth, groupon, google docs, google images, google drive.
How to use this trick: You can see some of the most reasonable search terms associated with the ones you are targeting without much trouble. If you type the word “Christmas”, you will find the top search terms associated with Christmas in a neat dropdown row. Those insights will tell you what products may be popular, what Christmas activities people are engaged in, and more. Use them to tailor your marketing campaign and achieve the best results, from product offerings to marketing campaigns to complete campaigns.
#2: Focus your search on an individual website
Most Google searches are geared toward the entirety of the internet. But sometimes, all you really need is to be able to browse through an individual site. Google has accounted for this and offered a shortcut specifically geared toward searching individual sites, which can be very useful for sites with HUGE content loads, or if you already know the site something was originally housed on, but you weren’t sure of exactly what the title was.
All you have to do is type “site: domain.com (search term)” and wait to see the site-specific results.
How to use this trick: Occasionally, a piece of content will shed light on something essential to your market. Your options become to bookmark that piece of writing forever, save some part of the writing that seems important somewhere in your personal research collection, or find a way to return to that data quickly. This Google trick saves you time and brain space. Also use it to research competitor sites and general media that may be a good PR target for your company.
#3: Isolate downloads
Just as using the term “site” helps you search only a site, the terms inurl, intitle, and filetype help isolate individual URLs, titles and files, perfect for finding MP3s and downloads online. In an era where content is king, pinpointing any of these to an exact degree can offer you valuable, high-powered results.
How to use this trick: Book marketers can use this approach for market research, as can musicians. But best of all, this trick helps you track the download of books particular to your audience/field and assess whether the customers of those books might be good audience members for you too. Find downloads associated with topics similar to those of your company and capitalize with that inside information.
#4: Use PDF search to gain advanced information
One of the only major downsides about having the world’s information at your fingertips is that misinformation often comes with it. And while some misinformation is easy to read and those who control the media environment do their best, not all of it can be pushed out of the media sphere. PDFs help you navigate the occasional search mess.
How to use this trick: Type PDF: (search term) and amazing things will happen. If you are performing any market research or researching brand marketing, expect a tremendous amount of results from successful companies and government agencies. Corporations love to release information in white paper form. Take advantage of it and read it.
#5: Use Google Trends
Google Trends is a beautiful tool that has been around for roughly seven years. It collects data based on search interest of a particular word or phrase, and has been highly successful at helping SEO marketers pining over the loss of their precious Ad Words Keyword tool by offering something to fall back on. Google Trends is the kind of research tool marketers have been pining over for decades.
How to use this trick: Test the search power of your market’s language. Use the language to your advantage by focusing on popular terms. Also check for seasonal terms, lingo, or cycles associated with particular queries. Google Trends may very well be the best public tool available for search data. Don’t miss the opportunity to use it.
By Aneesh Reddy, CO-founder & CEO of Capillary Technologies.
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