Marketers work with search data every day, but we are significantly underutilizing its potential.

Let me explain.

Search data can tell us all sorts of things about markets, audiences, behaviors and preferences. It is a source of information that enables smarter, better, and more timely business decisions beyond SEO.

In this article, I’m going to introduce you to a different way of looking at “research data.”

We’ll talk about sources, what data to extract, and how to use it to gain powerful insights quickly.

What is search data?

Search data is any data collected when a user searches a public website by entering a query string to find relevant information (products, information or answers) from a library of different content (pages of websites, media) published from different sources (websites, creators). ).

When people do this type of research, they are taking direct action driven by a need. In simpler terms, search data constitutes “active demand.”

Examining search behavior at scale opens up a new way to gauge demand for entire industries, specific verticals, single topics, individual brands and beyond. This process is known as digital market intelligence.

What is digital market intelligence?

Digital market intelligence collects and analyzes thousands or (sometimes) millions of digital data points – from ethically sourced public data – to obtain the kind of insights that would traditionally require qualitative investigation.

Except that it is much faster than a survey, and often, it is more precise because:

• The data reflects the real behavior of real people, free from bias or survey influence.
• It collects large data sets in just days (instead of weeks or even months), ensuring timeliness and relevance.
• Datasets contain much more data representing large swaths of the population (compared to a small survey sample).

Image by Gray Dot Co, October 2024

Search data is one of the key inputs to digital market intelligence because it provides an abundance of real data on user behavior at an extremely low cost.

Note: DMI is most effective when dealing with established industries with a significant digital footprint – it doesn’t work for everything!

Where do we get the data?

When most of us think of “search data,” we think of Google data. And make no mistake, this is a huge piece of the puzzle. Google is still a giant in the search game!

But more and more people are looking for information outside of Google. In fact, some data sources name TikTok as the world’s largest search engine for Gen Z users, not Google.

So when we talk about search data, we’re always talking about Google and other search engines.

But we also break out of the silo and recognize that sources like YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok, etc. are sources for which users have an active request.

Everyone’s data sets are extremely valuable for digital market intelligence because we can leverage them at marginal cost through APIs, platform-specific reporting tools, and third-party tools.

(For much less than traditional consumer analysis work!)

• Google Search Console.
• Google Ads.
• Youtube API.
• Google Trends.
• Third-party tools like Semrush or Ahrefs.
• Pinterest.
• TikTok.

Image by Gray Dot Co, October 2024

What research data is meaningful?

Now that we’ve established where we’re actually getting the data, what are we getting from?

The indicators with which we work day after day constitute the raw data for the calculations which answer the questions of large companies:

Image by Gray Dot Co, October 2024

• Keyword volume quantifies how often people actively search for products, information, or brands at any given time.
• Hashtag volume extent to which the content landscape is saturated by a given topic or brand.
• Keyword intent identifies where people are in the customer journey, as well as common behaviors and language at different stages of the funnel.
• Competitor research compares the demand for apple brands versus apples, as well as the demand each captures in the landscape.
• Historical trends create a clear snapshot of demand changes to illustrate the trend line of any area over time.

What can research data tell us about the market?

Digital market intelligence can answer many questions that marketing teams and even business leaders ask regularly.

Let’s take a look at some of the most common and illustrate how DMI can provide rapid insights using search data.

Has the market increased or decreased from year to year?

This is essentially an exercise in summarizing active demand for search terms that apply to your business or industry.

In the classic consumer insight sense, market size is generally referred to as the total addressable market.

To quantify TAM using search data, calculate the total keyword volume for the year for relevant search terms. You can research and export keyword volume at scale using a third-party tool like Semrush or Ahrefs.

Once you have your TAM total for both years, compare them to quantify the difference over one year. In terms of calculation, it would look like this:

(Total volume: Relevant keywords in year A) - (Total volume: Relevant keywords in year B) = YoY change in market size

Does an external factor have an impact?

Your business tactics could lead to an increase or decrease in performance, but that could be something completely out of your control.

Executives will want to know if this is the “tide” or something the “boat” (your marketing team) is doing.

Sometimes the quickest and easiest way to find out is to turn to search data, particularly our often overlooked friend, Google Trends.

As an example, let’s look at the simple case of an external factor causing increased demand for a service. More specifically, have the Olympics led to an increase in demand for gymnastics classes?

We know that the Olympics took place between July 26 and August 11, 2024. Now we need to know how searches for “gym class” in this window compare to other times outside of the Olympics.

Screenshot of Google Trends, September 2024

It is clear from the data that there was a significant increase in interest in gymnastics classes during the Olympic window.

We see a much smaller increase during the 2020 Olympics period (July 23 – August 8, 2021), but we can likely attribute this to COVID-19 and associated restrictions/behavior.

This type of information is not only useful for assessing whether the industrial tide has affected performance.

It’s also an invaluable tool for determining when to lean into specific products, insights, or trends through levers such as increasing paid spend, launching social campaigns, or changing the overall marketing mix to meet the moment. here.

How does demand for our brand compare?

Research data allows us to compare active demand for Brand A to active demand for Brand B to answer this age-old question.

For this exercise, extract keyword volumes for all queries that contain brand name A in the string. Then do the same for brand B over the same time window.

Add the keyword volume for each respective brand to get the brand total. Then calculate the difference to understand how they stack up.

(Total volume: Brand A branded KWs over X months) - (Total volume: Brand B branded KWs over X months) = Difference in active brand demand

Are we visible enough to raise awareness?

The search landscape is a big conversation. “Share of voice” can tell you how much of the conversation the brand is actually participating in.

This metric takes the total volume of keywords a brand is competing for as a percentage of the total volume of possible, brand-relevant keyword opportunities.

Since only 0.44% of users visit the second page of search results, start by identifying keywords where a brand ranks on the first page (either traditional placement, featured snippet, or previews of the AI). Because if it’s not on the first page, a brand is not truly competitive in most cases.

Calculate the overall volume of these keywords, divide it by the total volume of all relevant keyword opportunities (regardless of ranking) and multiply by 100.

( Brand-eligible keyword volume) / (Landscape keyword volume) ) x 100 = (% Share of Voice)

It starts with a simple change in perspective

Looking at familiar numbers from a new perspective begins to reveal business-critical stories.

And it doesn’t stop with search data!

Data from social media platforms and forum sites offers unique opportunities to better understand markets through the lens of consumer engagement and behavior.

The first step is to move from search data to demand data.

This is a subtle shift that can break us out of our siled way of looking at data. Breaking down these walls is the key to making digital market intelligence work for you.

Go ahead and find these enlightening answers, at the pace of modern business.

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Featured image: ImageFlow/Shutterstock