Google ‘Insights’ and Local Interest

The folks at Search Engine Land (including me) were briefed yesterday about the new Google Insights for Search. It’s a valuable tool that allows SEMs or interested others to check relative query volumes by date, region and content/product category.

Barry Schwartz has done a thorough write up. (Here’s the Google blog post.)

What’s interesting to me about the tool — as with Yahoo!’s Buzz index and Google Trends before it — is that traditional marketers can track the effectiveness of TV, radio or other traditional media campaigns according to the rise in queries around a particular term or phrase or brand in a particular region.

If, for example, “bite me” or “eat your veggies” were catch phrases in radio or TV commercials, you could see whether those phrases were being searched for in the areas where those commercials aired.

You can also do things like see where people are searching for “Cheap Gas“:

What about “yellow pages“? You can see demand for that type of query by region and the specific terms people are using on Google:

A search for “Apple” in the computer and electronics category (last 12 months) reveals where the concentration of Apple searches is happening (and thus product demand, or potential demand). You also get to see relative search volumes around particular products. In this case there’s a flurry of “rising searches” for the iPod Touch, potentially indicating people who want the iPhone but aren’t willing to switch carriers:

I’m sure there are a range of additional, interesting uses for this that I haven’t thought of as well.