Saturday, December 30, 2006
Keyword Research or "Search Intelligence?"
By Christine Churchill,
December 6, 2006
Ever wanted to spy deep inside a competitors search marketing campaign? A competitive intelligence tool from Hitwise shows you exactly which search terms are driving the most traffic to your competitors' web sites.
This article examines the Hitwise Search Intelligence tool, a hybrid keyword research and competitive intelligence tool. Search Intelligence delivers metrics and reporting views so you can easily evaluate and track a term's usefulness from a
marketers' perspective.
Overall, the tool is powerful, useful, and convenient. It provides a type of competitive intelligence that is user-oriented and delivers comparison data in a form ready for immediate analysis and application. Convenient one-button export features let you send sorted data into Excel or CSV formats so you can weave it into existing reports or custom analysis views.
A suite of tools
The Hitwise Search Intelligence tool is actually a suite, rather than a single tool. It includes lifestyle, demographic, ranking, charting, clickstream as well as the aptly named Search Intelligence tools. The well meshed integration and the distinct features make it particularly useful for online marketers. There are in-depth demographic profiles built in, as well as month, year and 2+ year search capabilities, so a marketer can do competitive analysis on hard-to-track but high-sales-potential seasonal or holiday specific keyword searches.
Hitwise developed the Search Intelligence tool in 2003 and has continually added new types of search reports, driven largely by custo
mer feedback. Though not the only web-based competitive intelligence tool on the market today, Search Intelligence does offer a robust delivery that makes it a worthwhile package.
According to Bill Tancer, General Manager, Global Research for Hitwise, Search Intelligence provides information on over 800,000 websites in more than 174 industry categories. The data is derived from partnerships with internet service providers and represents 10 million US Internet users (25 million worldwide).
This is an impressive and wide swath of data and the tool lets you slice, dice, and report in a variety of ways. One entry point I found particular
ly useful is their view of "website details." This search point allows you to enter a URL of any site you are interested in tracking. Most large sites are already in the Hitwise database. If the site you are requesting isn't included in the 800,000 sites categorized, you can enter it into the database and wait a few weeks for the tool to gather enough information about the site to make the results meaningful. As there are so many smaller sites, this data-gathering delay is not uncommon among competitive intelligence tools and the Hitwise database comes well stocked.
Multi-faceted click data
Most sophisticated logfile programs can provide site-centric data about domains sending traffic to your own web site, but the Hitwise tool provides a bigger picture. Not only could I see clickstream data co
ming to my site, but Hitwise shows you where users go after they leave your site. Although this information can sometimes be painful to learn (as in cases when you see a competitor ranking high in your downstream list), it gives the marketer feedback on how well their site is performing. What makes this revealing glimpse especially insightful is that this is not information you can get from your own logs.
Getting this view can also be a source of creative inspiration for new information items, products, or services to add to your site. For example, if your site carries high-cost items and many of the downstream clicks are to finance companies, you might want to consider adding financial information on your site or partnering with a financial firm. Additionally, the tool allows the marketer to see clickst
ream data on competing sites. It's an insightful peek into how competitors are getting traffic, where they are losing it, and how their flow patterns compare with your own.
