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.

Much could be said about the bewildering state of affairs in Iraq, but what do search statistics have to contribute to the pundits’ discussion? Which topics and themes do public interests gravitate toward? Which juicy details are people the most curious about when searching for Iraq online? How do these trends reflect upon the state of our society?

Recent research by Epiar Inc. explored the nature of online search surrounding Iraq and its principle cities. Examining the most popular 7800 search queries that include the words “Iraq”, “Iraqi”, “Baghdad”, or 11 other Iraq cities (using information from Wordtracker, taken from internet searches over the past 90 days), the following topics rose to the top of the public’s mind:

Click here for a full version of this Iraq search statistics report.

Without surprise, words such as “war”, “soldiers”, “military”, and “security” appeared prominently within public search, as did searches for information relating to casualties. Numerous searches for news and informational resources also appeared, with heavy demand for “maps”, “videos”, “news”, “pictures”, and “facts”.

Surprising topics were also present within the search query information. Unexpectedly high levels of search centered around the Iraqi Dinar, possibly performed by currency traders hoping to time a profitable investment in the troubled Iraqi currency? Searches for jobs in Iraq were also high, despite the noteworthy security concerns.

Sadly, searches relating to the ugliest portions of warfare also appeared, with thoughts of beheading, rape, torture, and exploitation on the minds of curious searchers.

Ironically, the supposed “search” for the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq also continues. Have the military strategists who concocted this war in the first place now resorted to scouring .html files?

On a lighter note, searches for a local breed of spiders were also high, with an estimated 147,460 annual searches for variations of the phrase “Iraq camel spiders”. I’d much rather look for exotic sand spiders on the internet than in person too!

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.

A recent study into internet searches for Canada’s booming real estate market has identified several areas where demand is extremely high. By analyzing the phrases entered into search engines by people searching for homes in Canada, several cities and provinces emerged as leaders in the Canadian marketplace.

The disproportionately high search frequency for Nova Scotia real estate, according to population, is intriguing. The message about this province’s beautiful landscapes and relaxed way of life must be attracting buyers!

Searches for homes and property in Calgary and Alberta were also high, possibly reflecting one of the many side effects of Alberta’s hot provincial economy? Note the prominence of these areas over more the densely populated cities and provinces of Eastern and central Canada.

The types of property being sought by internet searchers was also of note. Of the estimated 8,609,620 annual searches considered in this study, 847,165 were for houses, 635,165 for lots and properties, 275,575 for condos, and 181,405 for farms and acreages.

For more results on internet search demand for Canadian real estate (based on internet searches from April to July 2006), consult this free research report.

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.

Heated and ongoing is the debate about how the rise of the Internet as a significant player in the news and information business would affect the audience of traditional media. Shedding more light on the issue is a recently released study by Edmonton-based Epiar Inc. The study showed that when Internet searchers are looking for a particular local site, the most likely type of site they are looking for are the websites of local newspapers.

The basis of the newspaper study involved mining and processing the search frequencies of the top 3,198 searched phrases representing over 8,000,000 searches containing the word “Edmonton”.

2 word co-occurrences
in searches containing the word Edmonton

Although the exact phrase “Edmonton Journal” was the most searched phrase, the total searches using phrases with “Edmonton Journal” in them, like “Edmonton Journal classifieds” represented far less than 5% of the total searches. On the other hand, in a separate analysis of single word occurrences, Epiar found that real estate related searches, represented by the presence of a variety of words including real, estate, realtors, homes, MLS, etc accounted for almost 10% of the total searches. The second largest commercial category was travel related searches followed by various retail and service-related categories.

Epiar collects and analyses search frequency data to provide market research on the relative demand for various products and services, brand equity studies and search engine optimization and marketing data.