I have to do a quick Byte of something I just found this week. I’m a fan of Google Insights for Search http://www.google.com/insights/search/.

You plug in a term and they will show you the search historical traffic for that term going back as far as 2004. This has been available for a while, but just this week I’ve started noticing that they are adding a forecast to the chart. Google Insights for Search does work for every term. The term must be popular enough to track. And I haven’t found forecasts with all terms. Some terms seem more fluky than others (such as Treacy if you want a quick example) and the less fluky terms seem to include forecasts.

A quick rundown on what you  do with Google Insights:

• Track terms
• Filter by location
• Filter by time range
• Filter by Google search (web, images, news, product)
• Filter by category

And a quick rundown on what you can learn:

• Popularity of term over time
• Popularity by location
• Top related searches
• Rising related searches (so what are the up and coming keyword stars)
• News items that have had an impact on the popularity of terms (if applicable)
• Forecast of traffic for next couple of months

I know it’s kind of geeky this week – but hopefully interesting!