Quick Case Study: Google Trends

Last week I discussed using Google Trends to monitor and gain insight into your web presence, and with Super Bowl XLII this past Sunday in beautiful Glendale, Arizona (Go Grand Canyon State!), I thought this would be a good case study for the system.

As a refresher, Google Trends shows a graphical representation of search volume for (up to) 5 keywords over a period of time.

The graph above shows the search volume for the keywords 'superbowl,' 'glendale,' 'arizona,' ' phoenix' and 'scottsdale' during the month on January. In looking at this graph, I was surprised by the late build-up of the word 'superbowl,' which only overtook the works 'arizona' and 'phoenix' around the 16th or 17th of January. And notice the pattern for 'arizona,' it really does not fluctuate to greatly during the month of January...any assumptions that the Super Bowl being in Arizona would result in a direct spike in online traffic appears to be unfounded (at least in terms of Google Search).

Unfortunately, Google Trends does not allow us to look at the data a granular level, such as a keyword like 'arizona travel.'

For another look at the data, let's drill down to the states of Massachusetts:
And New York:
Another interesting note, notice that the keyword 'arizona' (orange line) is pretty consistent in New York, but certainly takes a larger jump in Massachusetts. A possible explanation is that we do limited advertising in Boston / Massachusetts, but a bit more in New York...so the volume of search was already high in New York.

Some of you are probably asleep at this point, but for the rest of you, try out a couple of searches using Google Trends. It does provide a good look at search traffic...especially the volume of that traffic during a major event.