Let’s begin with Google Search, a search engine service all of us use daily.

Since we’re close to the Christmas holidays, and I’ve personally promoted Christmas trees on the web several years ago, I’ll use “christmas tree” as the keyword phrase across all the services I’ll describe below.

Entering “christmas tree” as a search reveals a competitive market of 43 million search results.

(1) The sidebar column is fully occupied with 8 of the top performing Pay-Per-Click ads and your top 8 competitors for this search phrase.

“Universal Search” – according to Search Engine Watch – “also known as blended, or federated search results, pulls data from multiple databases to display on the same page. Results can include images, videos, and results from specialty databases like maps and local information, product information, or news stories.

You’ll see the impact of Universal Search in the SERPS (Search Engine Result Pages) above in (2) Image Results, (3) News Results, and (4) Shopping Results. For this search phrase, Google is partial to including these Universal Search results, so how can you get your properties/media to appear here?

(6) Google reveals additional “Related Search” terms that are important to your audience. Would you consider these terms in creating departments or categories on your Christmas tree site or campaign?

Looking at the top blue bar, you’ll see a “Show options” hyperlink. Clicking on this link or the “+” symbol will reveal additional “Related Search” results.

In the left sidebar, click “Wonder Wheel” to reveal “Related Search” results in a mindmap wheel. Clicking on the hyperlinks drill deeper into other search terms to help you in your campaign. How can you use this to your benefit?

There are other filters in the left sidebar to test. Let’s try the “Related searches” hyperlink, just above “Wonder wheel”.

Here’s another format to reveal related searches for our search term, “christmas tree”. Look at all these additional results that Google has delivered on a platter for us. How can you use this to your benefit?

Google Suggest offers searches similar to the one you’re typing. Yet another method Google delivers important search phrases to consider in your campaign.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool leverages Google’s contextual targeting technology to show you what related word searches your ad could show up on.

This free tool shows you (or what Google is willing to reveal to you) related terms, competition, current month & global search volume for the phrase your type in.

When I was promoting Christmas trees in 2004, these were terms I worked with. So its not surprising to see “artificial christmas tree” and “pre lit christmas tree” phrases at the top of the search pile. Brings back memories… ok, moving on!

According to Wikipedia, “Google Trends shows how often a particular search-term is entered relative to the total search-volume across various regions of the world, and in various languages.”

(1) This is a brilliant tool as it reveals what’s trending and what topics are really hot today. How can you use this to your benefit? Maybe leverage trends to select a hot topic to dive into with affiliate marketing? Or leverage trends by blogging (or writing press releases) about it to segue your product or service offering into the news.

You can use commas to compare multiple search terms, so I’ve entered “christmas tree, artificial christmas tree” in the search to test the results. Let’s see what results we get…

You can filter your search by (1) Regions and (2) Time. Using the drop down table to filter by time, I could filter “christmas tree” search volume last year compared to this year. How can you use this to your benefit?

(3) reveals graphed results comparing both the search terms, indicated by differing colors.

(4) & (5) shows which Regions and Cities have the most number of people search for this “christmas tree” phrase in Google. And (6) reveals what language is mostly used in this search.

According to Wikipedia, Google Insights “provides insights into the search terms people have been entering into the Google search engine. Unlike Google Trends, Google Insights for Search provides a visual representation of regional interest on a map.”

You can (1) Compare your search terms, locations or time ranges. Enter your “Search Terms” in (2) and “Filter” your search results (3) by Type (Web, Image, News or Product Search), Geographic Distribution (Worldwide or by Country), Seasonality and “Categories”.

Let’s see the results of our search below…

Wordtracker has a paid and a free keyword suggestion tool, both help you generate keywords to power your marketing campaigns. Enter a starting keyword in the free service’s “Keyword” field and it’ll generate up to 100 related keywords for you.

Wordtracker generates its data from a combination of meta search engines, so to approximate what the search count might look like via Google, consider multiplying the Wordtracker search count by 4 or 5.

One of my favorite web services, Wordtracker offers a free “Keyword Question Tool” that generates the top 100 questions people are asking in your marketplace.

Enter a single or a short keyword to find the questions people are asking in your market and this tool will give you one year’s worth of search data.

How can you use this for your benefit? What can’t you do to win with this, eh? Consider using this Keyword Question tool for ideas for blog posts, articles, press releases, videos, podcasts, forum posts, how-to tutorials, information products, webinar topics, and the list goes on.

A superb service to gain competitive intel and potential joint venture opportunities is through the effective use of Technorati’s Blog Search.

Enter your topic or keyword phrase, choose your filters, select “High authority”, then click the “Refine this search” button to see the magic!

Here’s a snippet of the search results, and drilling into these high authority results can give you intel on what your competitors are blogging about, or potential JV partners to connect with.

Google News is another web service that offers current updates on news and trends. How can you leverage this tool to your benefit?

Scrolling down the page of your Google News results page, you’ll find a link to create an email alert for your topic or search phrase. Click on this link and you’ll see this next image.

Simply fill out the details to create a Google Alert and be notified via RSS feed or email of news happening as-it-happens, once a day or once a week.

Consider using Google Alerts for research on your marketplace, your competitors, news you can piggyback on with press releases, blog posts or video promotions. You could also be first to add a comment of value on another prominent blog, boosting the exposure to your site/blog with real visitors from the other site’s audience.

SpyFu offers a free and paid service to generate detailed competitive intel that saves you time. A simple search for “christmas tree” generated stats for:
- PPC (Pay-Per-Click) cost per click
- Number of clicks per day
- PPC cost per day
- How many advertisers for this keyword
- Search results and volume
- Top domains advertising for this keyword
- Top 20 text ads from the top 20 advertisers, and
- Search results for this keyword as it would appear on Google

All this data for the free part of this service. Not too shabby, eh?

Compete.com is a web analytics company that samples millions of approved consumers’ online behavior, giving us a competitive intelligence service that is comprehensive and revealing. Using their “Keyword Destination” tool, I can get a list of sites this keyword “christmas tree” refers traffic to.

Compete.com offers an array of self-service tools that give you traffic history, competitive analytics, referral and destinaton data, category data, search analytics and much more you can read for yourself here. Needless to say, this tool ROCKS!

Another of my favorite web service apps, NicheWatch gives you speedy intelligence of who the top 10 or 20 ranked websites are on Google, and what SEO (search engine optimization) factors they’re utilizing on their sites. With this intel, you can easily determine what your competitors are doing, and how to outsmart or outrank them.

eBay Pulse gives you a search feature to determine a daily snapshot of current trends and hot picks on eBay. The results showcase “Popular Searches” by the number of searches on eBay, plus the “Largest Stores” by the number of active listings. Drilling down the categories and sub-categories in your topic or marketplace will give you corresponding results of the largest stores marketing on eBay, the products they’re selling and the price point they’re selling it at. Isn’t this incredible?

In addition, typing your topic’s keywords into an eBay search will reveal additional keyword suggestions of popular phrases on eBay – a double whammy!

Shopping.com offers a “Top Searches” Consumer Demand Index that gives you the pulse of consumer demand, emerging trends and the hottest products on this portal. You can view the top 100 searches for each of these categories, updated every two weeks. Tell me this isn’t like stealing toys from Santa’s workshop in broad daylight?!

In addition, typing in your topic’s keywords will generate additional keyword suggestions from Shopping.com, another win!

Lastly, I present to you Amazon.com. Yes, you can also generate Amazon-powered keyword suggestions of their top selling categories or items, but they have a couple of features that give deep insights for your research.

Click the “Gifts & Wish Lists” link, then scroll down the page and look to the left sidebar for the “Most Popular” module.

In “Most Popular”, you’ll see “Most Wished For”, “Most Gifted” and “Top Sellers” showcased.

Clicking on any of those 3 links will expand the results, as I have chosen to show under “Top Sellers”. Clicking a sub-category, eg. Toys & Games will reveal results to the right.

These 3 categories in “Most Popular” are incredible tools for keyword research, competition intel, trending research, audience interests, product selection and much more.

In today’s issue, we’ve explored 20 free ways via web services to effectively help you research trends, your competition and generate effective keywords for your promotions.

As you can see, you do not need to use all of the services to achieve intelligence you can act on today. Just combine a few, sprinkled with some “think out of the box” creativity, and you’ll be on your way in moving your campaign forward with confidence.

Whatever you do, don’t “Search Till The Cows Come Home”! Don’t get “Analysis Paralysis”.As my favorite comedian, Russell Peters, would say in his Indian accent, “Just take it … and go!” In the same way, I’m hoping you would “Just search it … and go!” and use your research to boost your business traffic, sales and profits!

Are there any of the above 20 research methods that you will implement? Are there other web-based research services that you recommend? I’d love to get your thoughts and feedback on this topic, care to share?