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April 21, 2011

Searching for Search-Related Insights

Michael A. Schiff
Principal Consultant, MAS Strategies

Topic: Experts in Data Warehousing

All of us are familiar with Internet search engines such as Google , Yahoo!, and Bing. We are also aware that companies can pay to have links to their Web sites included alongside the search results. These companies are attempting to drive users seeking information on a product or service to their sites to market their offerings to a (hopefully) qualified prospect. IP address tracking can yield additional details about the Web visitor, including general geographic location. Several vendors offer tools that can help organizations analyze visitor traffic at a company's Web site to help these organizations improve their Web site appearance, monitor visitor activity, and convert more visitors to customers.

Search engine companies such as Google and Yahoo! track search terms which can themselves be searched (e.g., Google Trends and Yahoo! Buzz). For example, Google search-term frequencies have been used to predict when the economy was recovering (increased searches for upscale luxury products could be an indicator that consumers confidence in the economy is increasing) and to predict political trends. Many Web sites include search capabilities as well. Through the use of cookies, it is possible to track visitor activity across multiple visits to an organization's Web site or even across multiple Web sites. This information can be used to determine how to prioritize the order in which search results are presented on an organization's Web site, which can lead to more effective up-selling and cross-selling.

Organizations need to recognize that in addition to monitoring visitor activity, the search terms visitors use to find content at the organization's site can also be of value. Organizations should consider tracking and collecting search requests and mine them for any insights they might yield. For example, search data can also be used to discover insights related to market trends, product issues, and public relations issues.

Let's examine some simple examples where collecting and analyzing search terms might provide insights:

Product issues: Users searching for solutions to product-related problems could be an indication of issues you need to address. Although this knowledge can be used to identify and ultimately fix product flaws and defects, it can also be used to quickly create new or additional "frequently asked questions" containing an interim workaround for these problems.

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Product demand and market trends: As searches for a specific product can be expected to correlate with demand for that product, searches can be used as a leading indicator to gauge demand for individual products. This can be used in a variety of ways, including production planning and analyzing the need for additional marketing campaigns or advertising. This can be further refined by using IP-address tracking to identify demand trends by geographic location.

Competitors: When users visit a company's Web site, it is possible to determine the site they previously visited as well as the site they visit next. By associating this with the product or service they were searching for on its own Web site, a company can determine possible competitors. By tracking this over time, a company can uncover which competitors are gaining and losing momentum with the company's prospects and customers.

None of the search examples I've mentioned represent new or revolutionary ideas. Instead, they represent examples of how tracking search terms can benefit both the searching user and the organization whose site is being searched. Organizations that track search terms can build a valuable database that can be analyzed to discover insights that might otherwise have been overlooked. Organizations should take advantage of search data they collect and invest in the relatively marginal effort required to yield potentially large benefits. Organizations that successfully build and harvest a database of user search terms are quite likely to develop a competitive advantage against companies that don't.

My advice: Search your visitors' searches for insight.

Michael A. Schiff is a principal consultant for MAS Strategies. He can be reached at mschiff@mas- strategies.com.

Copyright 2011. TDWI. All rights reserved.



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