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Hawaii, North and South Dakota, Iowa and Wyoming are the five hotspots of US interest in Highlands and Islands tourism - and have been since 2004.
Although this may sound a rather sweeping statement, it is factual. Better still this nugget of market research didn’t cost a cent; it was data mined from Google using their latest web analytics tool, Google Insights for Search.
An extension of Google Trends, the new tool gives website owners another way to obtain in-depth data on search terms across time and geography. For example, keyword volumes and trends, and inside knowledge to prepare online advertising campaigns and marketing by analysing internet search patterns.
Insights for Search, for example, can provide data on how a particular search term, or combination of search terms, performs over time and which are the top related and rising search terms associated with them.
To get the most out of the new Google tool, users should sign into their Google account first. (If you don’t have one, follow this link to create a Google account.) Doing so enables the user to access masses of detailed information to compare volume trends across multiple search terms, vertical-industry categories, geographic regions and time ranges.
Google say their new tool has been designed for use by advertisers, small business owners, academics and others to better understand search behaviour. The example they choose to illustrate the point is of a car manufacturer wishing to determine which marketing messages work best based on search patterns.
In this example, we take the search term, tourism and ally it to “Highlands and Islands”. Refine down All Categories to Travel and then click the Locations radio button. Next, click the + Add location text link and scroll through the list to United States. Finally, click the Search button and wait 0.35 of a second for your results.
The first view is that of the United Kingdom and this indicates the Channel Islands and Northern Ireland are hotspots of potential tourism visitors to the Highlands and Islands. Changing the regional interest drop down menu to United States meanwhile reveals that advertising spend should be targeting Hawaii, North and South Dakota, Iowa and Wyoming, the top five states where search volumes have been the strongest over the past four years.
This is perhaps somewhat surprising given the dispersal during the Highland Clearances. Historically, it would have been reasonable to assume the strongest tourism interest in the Highlands and Islands would be mainly from those states in which emigrants resettled, namely the eastern states of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
It is conceivable to spend hours tinkering about with Insights comparing multiple keywords and phrases across time and geography. There are certainly plenty of suggestions around as to how Insights can be used. Among the Insight interrogation ideas are:
· the relationship between generic and specific search terms
· how news coverage influences the relative importance of different keywords
· measuring the popularity of rival companies or brands
· measuring the success of online advertising over time and how it is affected by other factors.
Personally, I’m hoping to solve that age-old question, “In a fight who would win, Ronald McDonald or Mickey Mouse?”
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