Google releases Google Insights

Recon Thr is here again. The more I use the term, the worse it sounds.

Anyway, I came across Google Insights, the new Google featured aimed at advertisers.

Funnily enough, I wonder if this tool has the potential to be a new keyword search tool?

I've been playing around with it and so far, it seems quite informative as a keyword helper.

The features include time frame for a search; refining it regionally and keywords used to search the topic. By the way, do note that I set the filter to 'All Categories' for all my searches.
My Searches
Czechs love Gate Travel

I figured I would search for one of my favorite series, Stargate Atlantis; how many searches for this series in the past 30 days?

This was fun. Is it me, or are there a lot of die-hard Atlantis fans in the Czech Republic? And Canada is fourth on the list! No surprise there, but since there is a strong connection between Canada and SG series, I would have expected it to be first on the list.

Damn! If you change the time frame to 2004 - present, you still get Czech Republic as the one on the top of the list. Well, way to go guys. It's a fans all over the world who keep a series afloat.

USA is not on the top of either of the lists! Strange ... does that mean, SG franchise is not as popular there?
Americans love the evil Dr Horrible

Alright. So what if I searched for Dr Horrible? This is a bone of contention since it is apparently only viewable by US residents ( throw fans out of the loop, will you, evil laugh). And this after I wrote this flattering account of how it was nice of them to leave it open for all. Sigh.

Well, from 2004 - present, it seems people based in US, Canada, Australia and UK seem to dominate the search for a young man's adventure into the world of evil. (What? Only 14 for Netherlands!!). Ditto if I changed the filter, restricting it to the last 30 days.

On a related topic, if you look at the keywords, apparently a lot of folk out there were looking for Dr Horrible on Youtube. Maybe these were the people outside the regionally defined Dr horrible streaming video? Or just folks who didn't know you could still watch it on hulu?


Jericho's biggest fans
Holy moly! When I look for search results for Jericho for the last 30 days, I get an interesting report. Guess who was top of the list? Phillipines!! Followed by Netherlands!

Okay I am going to make lee way for the fact that a lot of the countries are finally getting to watch the show (and others) on cable. Also the fact that some of the keywords reveal the searches refer to inquiries about WWE guys.

Now, if I changed term to be "jericho 2" it looks like only people in US have been crazy about nuke drama. However, if the time filter was 2004 - present, it seems like Norwegians are really into season 2 of Jericho right now. South Africa is 5th on the list! I attribute this to cable.

Interplanertary Explorations

Guess what pops up when you look for "mars water". Well apparently NZ is top of the list, US is fourth with South Africa just below them. Interesting.

How about "Nasa shuttle"? US tops the list with NZ right behind them. Aussies come next.

By the way, in case someone was going pipe up, both searches were set for 2004 - present time frame.

Computers
"Microsoft" - India, Singapore, Trinidad and Tobago and Sri Lanka.

"Linux" - India, Cuba, Russian Federation and Bangladesh.

"Firefox 3" - Vietnam, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Russian Federation.


I'm going to continue to play around with this, see what I find. I understand that my preliminary searches, just randomly typing in keywords does not utilise the tool to its maximum potential. But once I get the hang of this and find out more, I will post more updates. For now, it was definitely fun app to play around with and use in everyday queries.