What people are really looking for

In class on Wednesday we evaluated the online strength of a company using various measures: page hits, quantity of search results, online chatter, etc. To me, one of the most interesting measures was search text analysis (http://inventory.overture.com). This tool returns a list of commonly used search terms and their freqency related to a term you enter into the tool. For example, if you enter "Starbucks," you get a list of the search terms people used that contained the word "Starbucks."

The tool bills itself as a way to identify which search terms to purchase, but it also sheds some light on the people behind the page visit numbers. Yes, it is important to know that people are (or are not!) visiting your site, but what does that tell you about them? You can use this keyword tool to gain insight into what those people are hoping to find when they visit your site. This is especially true for companies that do not do the same type of business offline as they do online. For example, in Starbucks stores, people can buy coffee drinks. This is not something people can do online. So, how does Starbucks know how to tailor their Web site?

Well, Starbucks probably uses plenty of expensive research to answer this question. But, a quick look at the top five common search terms that include "Starbucks" reveals that people are looking for information on coffee, nutrition, store locations, and franchise information, all of which are readily available on the Starbucks Web page. By this measure, at least, Starbucks appears to be on target.