Another in a long line of great internet marketing tools from Google is Insights for Search.

It allows you to see search trends for keywords across the globe. You can filter results by country and search term and it has an indicator of news related to chosen keywords, so you can see the effect the media had on search volume.

This is the kind of toy that digital marketers and webmasters play around with for hours, but is it of any use to the small business owner?

Almost certainly. It can help you identify large areas of traffic and see if the number of people looking for what you offer is growing or shrinking.

Pretend you run a magazine and website that reviews cars but you don’t really know where to best spend your time. Using the Google Insights for Search tool will allow you to see the kind of cars that people are interested in exploring further, and therefore the ones you should dedicate more space to. For example, search on “BMW” and add “Mercedes” as a second search term, filter the results to the UK in the past 12 months. The figures show that a lot more people in the UK search for information on BMW models than they do on Mercedes. You now know that, everything else being equal, reviewing BMWs would make your site appeal to a larger audience that one that reviews Mercedes.

You can use this tool to get an idea of where a market is heading and can see if your business is keeping up. Keywords surrounding Payday loans have risen almost 300% in the past 12 months. If your business offers other types of loan then is this an area that you should consider expanding into? If your business already offers Payday loans but your enquiry levels haven’t risen then shouldn’t you fire your marketing team?

One word of caution though. As the tool is still in BETA testing phase I’d take the figures with a pinch of salt and not bet my entire marketing budget on the results shown.