Search Marketing Blog
The Weekly Google Insight – Job Search & Search Terms
Posted by Jesse Liebman on 11.21.2008As a full-service Search Engine Marketing company, we pride ourselves on staying on top of current trends throughout the online search landscape. Unlike other advertising channels, Search Engine Marketing enables businesses to ascertain online consumer behaviors and marketing trends though detailed search data, and then correlate their findings with real-world developments.
Specifically, we can effectively target consumer sentiments for our clients by analyzing changes in the search frequency of popular search terms. Armed with this intelligence, we focus our content and optimization efforts for our clients’ Web sites around these relevant keywords. We are able to increase the actual relevancy of the sites, resulting in more qualified visitors and higher conversion rates.
Just as important, however, is the fact that we are also able to glean insight in demographic and behavioral trends taking place in specific market segments – even before the surface in traditional media sources. For example, this week, EngineWorks identified a significant increase in search volume for the query “jobs”. Over the past three months, we also noted that sites related to job listings have seen a substantial spike in traffic.
In fact, according to Google Insights, Monster.com has seen their search-driven volume from the search phrase “job search” increase by more than 500%! Obviously, this significant alteration in search engine behavior can be correlated the current down-turn of the U.S. economy. The in-depth research and analysis performed within our robust SEM campaigns provides bellwether observations such as this, which in turn can be used to improved targeting and increase budgets for specific segments of a market.
Delving even deeper into the rise of the search terms “job” and “job search” we noticed a connection to recent unemployment rates in specific U.S. states. Internet users in Florida, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, and South Carolina were the top searchers for “jobs” via search engines between September and October 2008. Interestingly, unemployment rates in these top five states have spiked over this same time period. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Florida’s unemployment rate increased 6.0%, Georgia’s increased 9.4%, Nevada’s increased 5.6%, South Carolina’s increased 9.6%, and North Carolina saw an increase of 1.4%.
We can actually observe the connection between significant changes in real-world conditions to alterations in the behavior search engine users. This data verifies the concerns and desires of the large segments of the population, which can be priceless information for any business interested in targeting segments of specific markets.
We continue to strive to stay ahead of current events, and decipher patterns that correlate between the real-world and the online-world. Each week, we will share a Google Insight here on our blog such as this relationship between current events and search engine trends. Let us know if you perceive this information to be as valuable as we do.
The Weekly Google Insight – Holiday Shopping & Search Terms - EngineWorks 12.18.2008 at 2:09 pm
[...] our last Google Insight piece, we took a look at the comparison of job seekers and their search terms. This week, EngineWorks has uncovered some good news for anxious [...]