Using Google Insights for Search

Soup or Salad? That is the question, but wait! How has Google been asked that question over the last 7 days, month, year? Was it on the Web? A News item? An Image or New Product and how do you find out?

You find out by using the Google Insights for Search beta*

Soup or Salad?

From 2004 to present it looks like soup gets the most searches in the winter, and salad gets the most searches in the summer, with soup winning the search battle over all.

Next week, boxers or briefs?

Fall Foliage in New England

Growing up in New England my favorite time of the year was fall. The beginning of school, crispness in the air and of course the brilliant fall colors. Our small country roads filled with "leaf peepers", the name sounds funny to me now.

New England is starting to enjoy their fall colors and so in memory of cider doughnuts, cold rosy cheeks, and crunchy leaf piles I am going to repost Saco River Canoe and Kayak's fall video.

Besides the autumn poets sing,
A few prosaic days
A little this side of the snow
And that side of the haze.
~Emily Dickinson

Enjoy Saco River Canoe and Kayak's Fall Colors

Connecting with Photos and Videos

You can write great text for your website and the search engines will crawl your site. Hopefully the search engines will like your text, consider it new and unique, but the bottom line is when the human being clicks on your site they usually look at the photos or videos first. Why is this? To my way of thinking it is human nature. We are looking for a connection and our brains focus first on photos and videos. It is a quicker connection. Viewing a photo about a product or service is sometimes easier than taking the time to read. The photo to the left was taken on 9/5/08 at 7:00AM. By 10:00AM the flower had closed, never to reopen again. I could write an essay about this cactus, but the image tells you all you need to know. One moment in time!

Let's face it, we use photos and videos throughout our daily life. When tragedy strikes some of the first items that people will try to save are their photos and videos. The photos and videos help to validate one's heritage and existence. This phenomenon might explain why those of us who grew up being filmed by our parents using a Bell & Howell 8mm now spend an excessive amount of time and money to have these old films converted to DVDs. And so it is when you use photos and videos on your website. The site and the services/products become tangible.

For almost ten years Webconsuls has worked with their clients to provide original photos that can tell the story. Furthermore, we sometimes were given videos or slide shows to work with; however, this medium was in its infancy stage on the internet. Enter Google videos and YouTube.

In a recent article from Site Pro News, Randy Zlobec states, "On YouTube alone (which accounts for more than ninety-eight percent of the videos viewed via Google), more than eighty-two million people watched over four billion videos last year. That makes YouTube both the top video sharing site and the top video search engine. YouTube receives as much as thirteen hours of new user-submitted video every minute, and more than fifty percent of the people watching videos online share links with other people. So, getting a good YouTube ranking could be an important way to bring people to your site."

If you are interested in having Webconsuls create a video for your site, remember this can be accomplished by using still photos. We invite you to look at two samples: Saco River Canoe & Kayak's Fall Color on the Saco River (this video also provides closed captions) or Cottonwood de Tucson's Equine Therapy for Addiction Recovery (this video includes original music specifically written for the video).

Check back next week for a short discussion on editing!