4 thoughts on “Google Insight For Search”

  1. IMHO, this is still so completely bass-ackwards. The information that they’re providing is great, don’t get me wrong. But look for whom the target audience of this information is intended:

    We received a lot of great feedback from agencies and advertisers on how they’re using the new version; from identifying new growth markets to optimizing their Google AdWords campaigns.

    To me, this information would be put to much better use if it were shown to searchers, rather than just to advertisers. Let me see how many people clicked what, as a result of my search. Let me see trends of what other searches other people did, after executing the search that I did. Let me filter my search results by various categories (Food&Drink, Automotive, etc. etc.)

    This whole imbalance in the ecosystem, the difference between the amount of information that is provided to the advertiser vs. to the searcher makes it feel like Google has set up a real Morlock-Eloi scenario in their search engine.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morlocks

    The average search user is your Eloi.. herded like cattle into whatever the one or two best links and ads are.. with no real ability for self-determination in the form of SERP remixing and hacking and otherwise modifying via interactive feedback.

    The advertisers, and Google itself, is your Morlock: Underground, out of sight, controlling all the complex machinery that makes things run. And keeping the Eloi happy and dumb.

  2. This seems to be ass backwards in many ways — not only what JG says above, but also simply by pigeon-holing according to Google’s predefined categories — the kind of stuff people used to criticize Yahoo for. If you’ve got qualified experts making those decisions, then I’m fine with it — but I would still like to know: who is making these decisions at Google?

    “Note: less than 10% of searches containing ‘sex’ are categorized as Games.”

    http://www.google.com/insights/search/#cat=&q=sex

  3. Nice follow-up to Google Trends. I like the way you can focus on targeted areas and that breakout list. I might do some testing with it and optimize blog posts for some of those breakout terms. Results might be interesting.

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