Google Trends

Some web searchers are looking for a particular web site that they already have in mind (last page of Bartelle). That is, they don't search for "social networking service," they search for "facebook." Use google trends to investigate website names (like brands) that people use as keywords. Try to compare prominent web sites or brands that do similar things (popular music sites, television networks, etc.). How do these compare to generic words and phrases that mean the same thing?

Getting use to using Google Trends was fairly easy. The website is extremely interesting. The first search I attempted was “social networks, facebook” and then I looked at “facebook, myspace”. The results were interesting to me because I have used both of these websites and I could recognize where the switch had occurred and it was very enlightening.
For this assignment I choose to do assignment 2, which was to compare words and phrases that meant the same thing. For example what I did when I first started using Google trends. By comparing social networks to facebook and two social networks with each other.
This time I chose to compare a “shoe store, payless” and “payless, footlocker”. Starting with “shoe store, payless”, I searched “All regions”. The results were that people would search payless more than they would search shoe store. These results go hand and hand with the Bartelle readings which suggest that most people search for specific website rather than a broad term. According to the Bartelle reading on page 27, he states that fifty percent of all searches use two to three words while only twenty percent use just one word. This goes against my findings because shoe store has two words and resulted in less searchers than Payless which is one word.

http://www.google.com/trends/viz?q=payless,+shoe+store&date=all&geo=all&...

The second findings were “payless,footlocker” and the results were that in all the regions payless still had more then footlocker. Then I choose to break the regions down and see the results for the United States only and the results were that payless was even more prevalent there. I would like to believe that the reason Payless is more popular is because 1. The brand emphasizes cheaper shoes and 2. You can buy shoes that are for Easter and for the basketball court. Payless is more versatile rather than Footlocker is more of a gym shoe, sneaker, athletic etc. type store.

http://www.google.com/trends/viz?q=payless,footlocker&graph=weekly_img&sa=N

http://www.google.com/trends/viz?q=payless,footlocker&date=all&geo=us&gr...