Real Estate Trends – Search Insights
Google has recently launched a new service called “Search Insights”. As with most Google services this product is free and very powerful. Search Insights allows you to research the popularity of search terms over time and by region. Different time periods or regions can also be compared side by side. It should be noted that the traffic numbers and regional demand are all normalised and so if you want to find specific search volume numbers in each region you should use Google’s Keyword Tool.
As someone who has just listed their house for sale, I wanted to examine the long term trend in “real estate” related searches to see how this year’s down turn in the housing market is reflected in people searching for real estate.
The two graphs below show the last four years of search demand for “real estate”. The second graph shows each year side by side and it does not take a rocket scientist to determine that I should have sold my house last year!
Google Analytics Advanced Configurations
It is unsurprising that Google Analytics is fast becoming the industry standard in website analytics. It’s free, fast and functional and only a small percentage of sites really need anything more than the extensive feature set offered by Google Analytics.
Google Analytics is a very powerful tool; however few users really utilise all the functions and thus only realise a small percentage of the benefits they could.
This article discusses a range of advanced options and configurations that should be considered and implemented where business value would be gained from having access to the new information gathered. Rather than a detailed technical guide, this article introduces each option and discusses why a business may wish to utilise it.