Cultural Research with Google

With the huge surge in keyword analysis tools on the web and the new changes in googles keyword analysis tool it might be interesting to try to use the tools for something other than figuring out what are the profitable keywords on the internet. The tools out there are just getting better and better with a higher level of reliability.

For those not familiar with keyword research it is the beginning steps of SEO (Search engine optimization). Often overlooked by beginning SEO's it is by far the most important step of SEO. It sets the starting point and guides all other SEO decisions. Different SEO's will take diferrent tactics but all of these tactics are based upon finding out what the popular keywords are that searchers use and then deciding which segment of these keywords to attack first.

Historically Wordtracker has always been the choice keyword research tool used by SEO's but other tools on the market offer other advantages. In particular Google's tool (google "google keyword research tool" and you'll find it) has made leaps and bounds. Formerly google did not release the actual search numbers but a recent change now incorporates these numbers. Because it's a free tool and based on google's actual index it can be surmised that it is a more accurate tool. There will still be innacuracies. It cannot take into account such things as people checking their rankings. But for a comparison tool it is great.

Unfortunately the google keyword tool cuts off search frequency numbers below a certain threshold. this threshold might be different in different industries. The stated reason for this is to not run into any privacy violations. In theory if the numbers went all the way down a person could find information so specific there could be privacy violations. For our purposes this doesn't matter a whole lot since we are trying to get an overview anyway.

Google has developed this tool for the use of advertisers on it's adwords network. It is freely available though. However it might be interesting to use it for different experiments. I'm sure anyone with a little imagination could figure out creative methods of doing so.

For Example:

What if someone wanted to figure our cultural makeup. What do we have more of Hip Hop Gangsta's or Cowboys. They might be able to design an experiment to do so. Let's give it a shot. I would first start off by picking an item that all cultures would search on. Something that if described would specifically tell you which culture the search was coming from. For this experiment we can pick belt buckles. Belt buckles are worn by both men and women and you can find them in endless variety throughout differnet fashion niches.

Using the google keyword tool we find that there are a total of 368,000 searches on the term "Belt Buckle". Because we are using the broad search this means that includes any searches with other words included. so we look down the list. Several of the popular terms are ambigous. At the top of the list we find silver belt buckle. by itself this term is ambiguous. We really don't know what exactly are people looking for with the term "silver belt buckle". Are they looking for a Western Belt Buckle or something else. However we can drill down on the term and get a better guess. when we look at the results below this we find that the terms seem to point to Western style buckles. Silver star is popular along with turqoise silver. We could make a fair assumtion that much of this traffic is Western related. Let's estimate it at 75%. So there's 18,000 searches on silver belt buckles and we'll estimate 75% of that is Western, so 13,500 searches for the general category of Western.

The next one that stand out is "Skull Belt Buckles". Another ambigous search. we really don't know again what niche we're looking at. Bikers like skulls. So do goths. Skulls are popular in a variety of niches. Drilling down on the term and we find that the terms are scattered among a variety of crowds. Iced out skull definetely points to the hip hop crowd and is a popular term. However you'll find a variety of biker terms and fashion terms also. It would take a great deal more research and cross refferencing with other tools to really find out what's going on. so for simplicity sake we move on.

A little further down the list we run into "Western Belt buckles". with the singular and the plural we find a total of about 18,000 searches. Then after that several seemingly Western Related terms such as star belt buckle. It's looking at this point that the Western niche is pretty popular. We don't find anything hip hop related or punk related etc until much further down the list. And these terms are showing low numbers around 1200 searches per month.

Ok so the example isn't perfect. Maybe those interested in Western fashion shop more on the internet. but I think you can see where I'm going with it. A researcher, entrepreneur, or anyone interested could use these tools to do some interesting research from their own home with no cost. Research that might cost a fortune. I'm interested to see if anyone comes up with some interesting experiments. I think I'll research the Martial arts world next. I run a martial arts school and maybe it would give me some insight into what people are really looking for when researching martial arts.

Let me know your experiments.