As the search engine you’ve probably already heard on the media about the massive volume of hits that fooled Google into thinking it was under attack and slowed Google down.

Web Consultant’s Eye

As a web consultant it is interesting to me, okay okay – I love the web, that Google Trends is already showing the following:-

• A mark on the timeline referencing news of Michael Jackson’s death. Nice automation Google.
• If you compare the level of searches over the last 12 months to the time of his death you can see a 30 fold jump in traffic (opens in new window)
• And if you change the scale to just the last 30 days you find two things… first that whilst the number of actual user searches is falling the number of news articles about him are beginning to increase after the obvious surge. NB. This blog post will add to that too.
• Second thing we notice from the 30 days scale is that the “surge” of web traffic over the “normal” level indicates that the factor is only 10 fold…. a bit of simple maths tells me that the traffic before he died was therefore three times higher than over the last 12 months…. which is a great increase for someone trying to make a comeback

your Web Consultant

Here are some facts that you’ve probably noticed or heard but lets put it all together…

• The Yellow Pages is slimming down, basically businesses know the Yellow Pages just doesn’t work like it used to. Anyone with access to a computer uses their computer.
• In December 2008 – 8 million households in Australia (that’s 75%) had internet access. So I reckon that’s at least 75% less people using the yellow pages compared to pre-internet life… and this trend is continuing. Besides as the Yellow Pages hasn’t shrunk by 75% yet you’re less and less likely to even get called as the ratio of readers to advertisers gets worse and worse.
• Also, in 2006/07 87% of Australian Businesses had internet access. So it’s not just at home that people use the web.
• Also in 2006/07 40% of Australian Business placed orders online.

Australian Internet Facts (PDF) – opens in a new window

So as far as I’m concerned this trend is definitive and proves that you need to stop wasting money on the Yellow Pages!

Go Internet Marketing!

Internet Marketing is the way ahead, there is no doubt about it.

The growth of internet use is continuing and completely unstoppable. This is absolutely clear to me after the last few week of my mother-in-law asking me if I can set-up her new PC soon as she hasn’t checked gmail in ages and wants to hop onto Skype. I got her set-up with TPG and using Fedora Linux. Not bad for 70 this year! Go Jilly

The problem is how to do it right. Many businesses in Australia already have a website but don’t see any return from it think about your customers.

• What are they searching for? Think phrases.
• What phrases are important for you to be there, ready and waiting on Google?

Internet Marketing is the future – Try this out.

If you still need convincing or are seriously interested in finding some of these magic phrases then you have to try this out. Google has a service called Google Trends. Google collates data about what people are searching for and enables you to generate your own comparison charts.

As a professional web consultant I use it all the time to compare search terms and gain insights into what search terms are becoming important and which are on the way out.

Get into your customer’s head – Ask them!

I meet people who run businesses all the time and ask these business owners what people use in Google to find their current website…

Number 1 answer is “we don’t know”

Number 2 answer is “our company name”

That’s a sign that there is something seriously wrong with their website. If you’re a Plumber in Brisbane wouldn’t it be nice to be the number one in Google for Plumber Brisbane rather than only get visitors if someone happens to already know your business name? YES, of course it would. It makes the difference by a factor of a hundreds or even a thousand everyday for almost any topic you could mention.

Be your own web consultant for five to ten minutes. Play with this tool and think about keywords & phrases.

Step 1) Visit Google Trends and type in some searches about the type of service you provide. If you get stuck thinking of words try:-

• Free Keyword Tracker
• Google Suggest
  

Step 2) Take some of these phrases to Google Trends and follow the instructions. Type them into the big input box and split phrases up with commas e.g. you want to compare how many searches are made for “Mashed Potato” and “Potato Chips”.

Step 3) Look at the results and ask yourself some questions about anything you see. Click here for my example result and note the format of the text in the input field at the top with the commas separating the phrases. Now spend some time thinking about the result.

• Why are 1.6 times as many searches made about Potato Chips than Mashed Potato?
• Potato Chips searches are trending downwards, why?
• There are two spikes in the Mashed Potato searches, are they pre and post Christmas?

Have fun. There’s lots of interesting stuff to discover in Google Trends

Your web consultant