Thursday, November 03, 2011

Powerful Keyword Insights In Yahoo! Clues

Not sure if you've had a chance to check out Yahoo! Clues yet, but if you haven't, I would take a look if you're responsible for managing search advertising at your company.  There is some powerful and insightful keyword data available in the Trend Analysis section.

Yahoo! Clues (beta) is a search keyword trending tool.  While it gives you a peek inside what's trending for searches on Yahoo! (sports, people, places, etc), it also gives you a peek into how your business stacks up against your competition when it comes to keyword searches.

One of my favorite reports under Trend Analysis tab is called Search Flow.  What Search Flow provides is "a list of the most probable previous and following user searches from an analysis of aggregated search patterns across Yahoo! Search. The top item under Previous Queries represents the most probable search term people tried before this search query. Similarly, the top item under Next Queries represents the most probable search term people tried after this search query."

Below is a good example.  By typing the term 'Staples' into the Find Trends box and clicking on the Discover button, I am able to see the most probable search keywords that people used BEFORE they searched for the term 'Staples' and then the most probable search keywords that people used AFTER they searched for the term 'Staples'.


This is very insightful data because it allows you, the advertiser, to get into the mind of your consumer/visitor.  With just this data alone, we can start to pick up on some interesting trends here.

First, we see that the consumers are interested in finding store locations as we see them searching for "staples locations" and "staples center" in the Previous Queries.  In the Next Queries we see the same trend of searches for "staples locations" and "staples center".  This obviously lets us know that a lot of visitors who come to Yahoo! and search for "Staples" are looking for store locations.  As an online marketer, these are good keywords to bid on because you know that a lot of your consumers are searching for them.  Also, by helping your consumer easily find your store, it will help drive foot traffic to your brick and mortar business.

The second trend we see here is discounts!  In Previous Queries, consumers searched for "staples easy rebates".  In the Next Queries, they searched for "staples coupons".  This trending data lets you know that your consumers are looking for deals to entice them to come to your store.  As an online advertisers/marketer, you should make it easy for your consumers to find discounts/coupons for your business.  Perhaps bid up on keywords such as "Staples Coupons" and make sure you provide your consumers with a landing page that gives them easy access to any coupons you have available (could be printable, mobile, etc).

The other advantage to looking at data under the Trend Analysis tab is gathering competitive intelligence.  If I also add in the search term "Office Max" to the Find Trends box, I get all sorts of great insights into how my Staples audience/consumers perform compared to how Office Max's audience/consumers perform.

In this competitive view we get...

Traffic Data Insights

 
Gender Data Insights


Geographic Data Insights


Search Flow & Related Searches Insight


The fact that this competitive data is freely available and already aggregated up for you (thanks to Yahoo) is amazing!  I recommend sharing Yahoo! Clues with your online marketing team so that they can leverage the insightful data to help drive a more profitable online business.