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.

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.

Many people travel to Chicago or consider the windy city home, but what are people looking for online in relation to the Midwestern city? Tourist attractions, local services, general information, special events, or perhaps something else?

Recent research by Epiar Inc. explored the nature of online search in relation to Chicago. After analyzing the top 7000 phrases with an estimated annual search volume of over 50 million searches, the following topics emerged as the most prominent Chicago search topics:

Please click here for an expanded report on Chicago online search statistics.

Exploring Chicago Searches

Professional sports fans will be interested to see the high number of searches for Chicago’s football, baseball, and basketball teams. Apparently, the Bears’ very successful season is not limited to only the football field. It is amazing how searches for sports teams compare in number with searches for other Chicago features and indentifying characteristics - who knew professional sports were really that popular?

Tourist institutions and special events also appeared prominently within internet search, with the Chicago Marathon, the Chicago Auto Show, and the Art Institute of Chicago all attracting significant levels of public attention. Which local attractions do you think people might be searching for around your home town?

Searches by people in need of local services were also high, with phrases like “jobs in Chicago”, “home inspection Chicago”, and “Chicago police” in high search demand. Presumably, many more searches for local services are also being entered without the word “Chicago” in the phrase, possibly including a neighborhood geographic reference instead or no geographic mention at all.

With all of this talk about Chicago, it makes me want to go there to see if the search frequency research properly reflects the real city – good thing a couple of us from Epiar will be in town to present at a Search Engine Strategies conference there later this week!

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.

Millions of people are looking for downloadable material, but what type and for what use? Are people searching for music, games, software, images, articles, or other downloads? Recent research by Epiar looked into these questions, providing potentially useful information for webmasters wanting to add resources to their sites that the public is proven to seek in high numbers.

Within the top 14,000 download-related phrases entered into search engines, the following topics appeared the most frequently:

Please click here for a complete listing of the top 14,000 download phrases.

Taking a Closer Look

Without surprise, searches for downloadable music were prominent. Within these searches, music, songs, and mp3s were among the most popularly searched items. Likewise, high search volume was also present for movies and ringtones.

Searches for Hindi music and movies were surprisingly high - another example of how search frequency research often highlights unexpected facts and trends!

Search activity surrounding computer software was also high (for Microsoft products in particular), as were searches for games. In what ways might software developers or open source advocates capitalize on knowing what people are searching for?

As for the question of how to best monetize downloading activity, there is little doubt that most searchers do not want to pay directly for their downloads. In fact, free was one of the most prominent themes found within this entire study, appearing in approximately 45% of the search phrases. With an estimated 145,000,000 annual searches for all of the phrases included in this study, that’s a lot of opportunities for enterprising and creative webmasters to capitalize on!

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.

Presumably, everyone reading this post can understand the English language; at least, for the most part. While most of the words used in common situations are understood by the majority of people, several words and topics also exist that leave people secretly thinking, “What on Earth does _____ mean?” In fact, many conversations include technical terminology, references to pop culture, academic jargon, partially understood terms, or other lexicographically disestablishmentarianistic words not known to everyone around the circle. But how do people look up the meanings of these words later on, and which definitions are sought the most often online?

Recent research by Epiar explored these topics, seeking to answer the following salient questions: For which words do people most commonly turn to the internet for definitions? What trends emerge when examining this group of words? What insight can be gained by knowing which words people most commonly search?

Of the top 9000 phrases entered into search engines which include the word “define” or “definition”, the following words appeared the most frequently:

Please click here for a complete list of the top 9000 definitions people searched for as measured in this study.

Adding Definition to the Definitions

Overall, the top 10 relevant phrases which searched for a definition were:

• first name definitions (searched an estimated 772 times per day)
• word definitions (518)
• definition of technology (496)
• definition of software (482)
• medical definitions (454)
• definition of culture (426)
• blog definition (416)
• definition of science (410)
• legal definitions (408)
• definition of communication (404)

Computer technology searches were quite prominent throughout the study, including:

• domain name server definition (334)
• definition of html (286; an appropriate number, wouldn’t you say?)
• definition of operating system (232)
• definition of cache (230)
• definition of application software (208)
• definition of windows xp (186)

Similarly, searches relating to business and money represented a large portion of searcher curiousity:

• define money market account (268)
• definition of public relations (226)
• definition of management (220)
• definition of marketing (220)
• financial definitions (184)
• definition of investment (164)

Searches relating to physical health were also high:

• definition of physical education (236)
• definition of sport (220)
• define aerobic activity (198)
• definition of obesity (166)
• definition of physical fitness (160)
• definition of holistic (142)

Fun searches also emerged, such as:

• definition of recreation (362)
• definition of love (262)
• definition of play (258)
• a definition of entertainment (248)
• definition of leisure (232)
• definition of art (214)

Surprisingly, searches for obscure academic terminology were relatively low. Clearly, the existence of big words with complex meanings doesn’t mean that mass culture wants to know about them! Still, I was excited to see 84 searches a day for “definition of rhetoric” – 84 curious minds a day intimating hope for contemporary culture’s acute adult trivium and quadrivium deficiency!

Connecting the Dots – From 1’s and 0’s to a More Clearly Defined Meaning:

New lists of digitally gathered words and topics like these seem to spark the question: What does all this information mean? From the standpoint of cultural anthropology, how does the availability of information that details zones of linguistic uncertainty and human curiousity impact a thorough analysis of contemporary culture? In what ways can this information all be applied? Perhaps most importantly: who, aside from a handful of leading-edge businesses, is actually currently taking advantage of this new social data, and to what end?

In the age of the “Shift-F7” thesaurus, the decentralization of informational authority and pop culture, the rise of the 30-second attention span, globalization’s linguistic Darwinism, and the accelerated proliferation of new gadgetry, how will the English speaking world maintain its hold on understanding its own language over time? Are hermeneutic homogeneity and lists of common words that multitudes misunderstand set to expand or diminish into the future? What impact will these changes have on educational systems or other organizations concerned with promoting the public good?

Just one of the many non-technical areas of inquiry being stretched by new information which springs from the digital revolution…

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.