Google is the world’s most powerful search engine, but many people do not know secret “tips” to use its advanced search engines. As marketers, we often want to keep track of keywords that matter to our industry, our company, and our industry, especially in these trying times.
Can we leverage Google to for “marketing research” on timely and trending conversations that matter to us? You betcha. In this video, I’m going to who you how to use advanced Google search techniques to create “canned searches” that you and your team can go back to again and again.
In addition, I’m going to use Start.me which is a free service where you can build a personal (or team) dashboard. Let’s get started!
Video
KEYWORDS: IDENTIFY YOUR KEYWORDS
OK, I’ll assume you have some keywords in hand that matter to your customers. Given the time that we live in, I’m going to pretend I’m working for an Italian restaurant in New York City, specifically Greenwich Village. We offer both dine-in and take-out services, ranging from basic pizza to full-course Italian meals. When times are good, we also offer catering to nearby businesses and nonprofits. So for keywords that matter we have –
pizza
take-out
Italian food
catering services
New York City
Greenwich Village
Given that we’re in the middle of the Coronavirus outbreak, we’d also like to keep track of what’s happening in our industry. So a keyword pattern like “Coronavirus Restaurants” would be interesting to monitor for industry trends, as might a keyword like “NYC Coronavirus.” Note that we’re using Google Search and NOT Google news which is a different animal altogether.
SET UP GOOGLE SEARCHES BOTH SIMPLE AND ADVANCED
Next, go to Google at https://www.google.com/. Now, you can do some basic searches by just typing in keywords and bookmarking those for Start.me. Or, you can do some more advanced searches.
- Basic searches. Do these and bookmark into a Start.me panel.
- Time-sensitive searches. Use the TOOLS > Time menu and create canned searches like “Catering NYC” or “restaurants NYC.”
- You can also use quotes as in “NYC restaurant regulations” which is different than NYC restaurant regulations (no quotes).
Working with your keywords and time horizons, you can also use Google Advanced search at https://www.google.com/advanced_search. They hide this feature. One of the better ones here is domains, so you can enter a domain like “nytimes.com” or “nypost.com” AND also set a time horizon. Or, you can use site:nypost.com “restaurants” with a time horizon directly in search. Here’s that search with time horizon of last week.
USE START.ME TO BOOKMARK YOUR “CANNED” SEARCHES
I’m a huge fan of Start.me. I set up a personal dashboard of all my searches, and I like the layout. You could also use Google Bookmarks or other bookmarks if that works better for you. But the goal here is to take your “canned” searches and then save them into a Start.me panel. Then you can just click and boom “go” to see what’s going on in your industry or with respect to your customer at the click of a mouse. Happy searching!
