Google Insights for Search Gets 3 New Features

Google has launched a few new features for Insights for Search, which should make the tool even more useful to marketers than it already was. If you are unfamiliar with the tool, it was here One of the new features is the addition of new data sources. Insights for Search now incorporates data from Google News, Image and Product search. This will give users better insight into what people are searching for beyond just Google Web Search. It's not hard to imagine why this additional data would be of use.

"The new Insights for Search lets you break down search data in several ways," says Google's Hicham Alaoui. "For starters, you can take a look at the rising News searches over the past 7, 30, or 90 days."

The second feature is category suggestion. When a user types in a search term, the tool suggests all relevant categories that the term might fit into. Google gives the example of "apple," which would bring back varied category suggestions like "Computers & Electronics," "Entertainment," and "Food & Drink."

The third feature is the ability to "drill down to specific geographic regions" (in the US) to see how search interest levels vary. At the Google News Blog, they look at an example for "March Madness" which suggests that basketball is the most popular in states like Kentucky (living here, I certainly believe that), Kansas, and Iowa.

Google also offers an Insights for Search gadget that you can add to your iGoogle home page for added convenience. That can be found added additional features that help you track engagement. Read my