Posted by Alex Chau on May 16th, 2008
Confused by recent financial news? Well, me too. Turn to CNN, Bloomberg News, CNBC, take your pick and dreary eyed journalists inch us closer to a recession every doom and gloom word they speak. Now even your grandma is worried about the credit crunch and is packing baked beans and shotgun ammo in the basement. Cut to a commercial selling derivative annuities and 30 seconds later you’re told Visa (V) and MasterCard (MA) are beating all profit expectations. This world just doesn’t make sense. Let see if our research pulls up any enticing insight.
So what does everyone do when their bank account runs red? Start saving? No silly, credit of course. There’s a reason why Visa and MasterCard execs receive 8 figure bonuses. They’ve successfully marketed everyone into thinking they need a credit card. The term, credit card and credit cards, tops our list with over 17,000 cumulative searches a day. Not all, but I suspect most are researching how they plan to pay for their next vacation, plasma screen TV or LV clutch. So while your neighbour’s mortgage is defaulting, the simple pleasures of urban glitter never escape your reach. But hang on.
What else does our research tell us? Surprise, the 4th highest search are people looking up queries related to bad credit. That tells a lot about our current financial situation doesn’t it. Somebody tell the Department of Education our high school finance class skipped this module. Hang on, that class doesn’t even exist.
No child left behind? No child left without credit is today’s slogan.
Epiar is an Edmonton-based internet market research and search engine optimization company. Please contact us for more information or to commission your own research reports.
Posted by Curtis Dueck on October 16th, 2007
We've all heard about return on investment (ROI) as well as search frequency research. But what happens when we combine the two to see which of the 2008 US Presidential candidates have the highest levels of public interest (as measured by the number of online searches for each candidate's name) compared to each campaign's expenditures? Do we arrive at a rudimentary form of a Presidential campaign ROI?
Early estimates indicate that, while Ron Paul and Hillary Clinton share a similar number of daily online searches, the amount of money they have spent differs wildly. Big spenders Mitt Romney and Barack Obama have yet to capture the curiousity of online citizens despite already spending tens of millions of dollars. Alternately, small spenders Mike Huckabee and Dennis Kucinich have disproportionately high levels of public interest compared to their undersized budgets. Perhaps the over-achieving campaigns of Huckabee, Kucinich, and Paul are a good early indicator of identifying this election's most potent dark horse candidates?
While charting the online searches for a candidate may not be the most important metric for predicting the outcome of the 2008 Presidential election, I sure would not be happy if my campaign showed an imbalanced ROI like Romney, McCain, or Giuliani!
Epiar is an Edmonton-based internet market research and search engine optimization company. Please contact us for more information or to commission your own research reports.
Posted by Curtis Dueck on July 20th, 2007
People are willing to try the strangest diets to shed a few pounds. Why not just eat less junk food and move more often? Regardless, not even one of the top 10 fad diets is appealing enough to make me want to try it!
Perhaps to improve their beach appeal, people are searching for “South Beach Diet” and “Atkins Diet” over 2000 times each per day. Still, “Diet Pills” remain today’s most popular online diet topic, with over 2800 searches per day for those easy-to-swallow exercise replacements. Additional diets I'd rather not try (but apparently others do) include the “Mediterranean Diet”, the “Mayo Clinic Diet”, and the “Grapefruit Diet”.
While the effectiveness of fad diets are doubted by many, few would question the unhealthiness of several diets that did not make the top 10 list: “Chocolate Diet” (28 searches per day), “Water Diet” (59), “Barf Diet” (81), and “Crash Diets” (44).
To see a sampling of the raw phrases used to create this list, check out these fad diet search phrases.
Epiar is an Edmonton-based internet market research and search engine optimization company. Please contact us for more information or to commission your own research reports.
Posted by Curtis Dueck on July 6th, 2007
While in the midst of doing research on various projects, the most unexpected phrases keep popping up in our keyword lists – phrases that real people in presumably real situations obviously feel compelled to enter into search engines.
These phrases are bizarre enough on their own, but what really makes me shake my head and wonder is imagining the situations these poor, unfortunate, confused people must find themselves in the first place…
Bizarre Phrases that People Actually Type into Search Engines:
- My english teacher lost my essay (searched 18 times per day)
- Whole body donation (22)
- Shaving horse (27)
- Cow seeds (6)
- Underground soil (3)
- Natural dog (64)
- Husband doesn’t shower or wear deodorant (5)
- My husband wears my clothes (10)
- Why is my husband a jerk (6)
- How to flirt (179)
- Why is my honda goldwing to hard to push (15)
- Holiday meal with no teeth (4)
Epiar Inc. is an Edmonton-based internet market research and search engine optimization company. Please contact us for more information or to commission your own research reports.
Posted by James Klassen on June 29th, 2007
Keeping with our theme of blog posts based upon seasons or holidays, and based on the hope that I will be able to spend more time on a patio with a cool drink as a result… today's post is centred on summer.
What are searchers looking for in relation to summer? Are they searching for classic summer cocktails or studiously inquiring about summer school classes?
It's turns out that searchers are doing neither. Looking at the Epiar market search data, we see mainly pop culture references float into the top 10: Justin Timberlake's song 'Summer Love', 'Summer Fashion' & 'Summer Dresses', the song 'Summer Nights' from Grease, the singer/ songwriter 'Donna Summer', and 'Rocket Summer' a power pop band from Texas.
More traditional summer activities round out the top 10 phrases: 'summer camps', 'summer jobs', and 'summer vacation'.
Epiar is an Edmonton-based internet market research and search engine optimization company. Please contact us for more information or to commission your own research reports.
