I’m a big fan of Niche Research, in fact, they don’t call me ‘That Son of a Niche’ for nothing! I do a lot of it and so tools like what Google has put together here are great time savers and provide very useful data. I have been using Google Trends for quite awhile now to do Niche Research, but they have just released some new functionality that will blow your mind and give you a massive boost in competing in any niche you may be involved in.

Trends for Websites

So what they have done, is added a section called ‘Trends for Websites‘

In this portion of Google Trends you can now type in URL’s of your competitors for example, and it will compare them, but what’s really powerful about this new functionality is that it allows you to see where your competitor’s customers are visiting and where they go once they get there.  This gives you an insight into how customers visiting a particular kind of site are navigating when looking for certain products and services.

This trend data is compiled from multiple sources and isn’t strictly from Google’s own search data and is aggregated from millions of users.  One other caveat for this new functionality within Google Trends for Websites is that not all websites can be searched using this new tool and is only going to work for sites that are currently getting significant traffic.

Head on over to Trends for Websites and follow along with what I’m going to describe here.

Now, if you’ve done research online to help you not only build better websites, but also used it to find out where your competitors are getting their traffic, you will instantly see how powerful this new section really is.

So, as you can see from the pic below, I did a search in “Google Trends for Websites” using apple.com and dell.com by separating the URL’s with a comma.  Keep in mind that you’re not limited to just two URL’s (you can search up to 5) by just separating them with a comma.  I would not recommend doing more than a few in this case however because it will tend to obscure the other results that we are looking for in the ‘Also Visited’ and ‘Also Searched For’ columns.

If you look at the upper right hand corner of the blue title area, you can select the region and also specify the timeframe that you want to look at.  This is so powerful because you can even have it show you the results of the past 30 days, months, year(s) or even all years.

Once you have that set you can then examine the results and drill down even further into the ‘Subregions’, but also the ‘Also Visited’ and ‘Also Searched For’ columns to get a further refinement of the results shown.  Some of the results you can glean from this is very interesting, depending on the sites you are searching.

So, let me ask you something; do you think you could use this information to help Optimize your niche websites to get boat loads of highly targeted traffic?

So what else can this data show you?

Well, here are just a few suggestions:

• The “Subregions” area can show you what locations are getting the most traffic for these sites, all the way down to the state level.
• Provides data which indicates where their customers are navigating to once they reached their site.
• Indicates what their customers searched for once they reached the sites location, providing you valuable data on the behavior of their customers as a whole.
• And much, much more.

Just think about this for a few minutes and you can come up with other even more valuable pieces that can be extracted from this data.

One of the things I would really like to see Google do here is to actually add the number(s) for these searches shown, just like they do now within the Adwords keyword tool, instead of only providing the bar graph.  I’d also like to see them compile data for all websites (within reason) instead of only providing data for those getting millions of unique visitors. In any case, I think you’ll agree this is extremely powerful information and I for one really appreciate Google adding this functionality.  Not only is it going to benefit your own website optimization, but it is an excellent Niche research tool if used with that in mind.

See What The World Is Searching For

Google isn’t done yet.  They have also added a new section called ‘Google Insights for Search’ that allows you to analyze worldwide Google searches that will show you results which will indicate the interest by searchers over a specific timeframe.  It will list the top searches, top rising searches and even has a worldwide graphical heat map that shows the search volume index for all the different regions, subregions and cities.

I’ll be doing a detailed write up of how you can use this information to not only give your own websites a boost, but also to help you identify profitable Niche areas which you can capitalize on.

For more information about these tools and detailed instructions for how they work, check out the Google Insights for Search Help Center and the Google Trends for Websites Help area.

Talk to you all soon and become your own Son of a Niche!

The first thing I recommend you do is the following:

• If you don’t already have a product or service, then you will want to make a list of all your interests, hobbies, ideas down on paper (make a list of at least 20 to 30 things)
• Evaluate which ones you like most and put them in chronological order of the most appealing (This is important, so spend considerable time evaluating each of them)
• Evaluate which ones involve a market that is a current hot trend/fad or where there is very little competition but solves a big problem.
• Reorder your list to reflect items on your list which have both qualities from your two evaluations above.
• Now pick 5 of these and we will call them your target market

Now keep in mind, you can use this same strategy above if you already have products that you want to sell. Just use this same principal for determining which products or areas to concentrate on first.

In order for you to have the greatest chance of success, you really need to find a market niche that appeals to you, whether it’s a hobby, or special interest. You have to find something that excites you so that when you get up in the morning you look forward to the day ahead. It should literally feel electric to you and if you can combine this with something that is a current hot trend, you will have yourself a winner and can begin to build and market your new business empire. Keep in mind that you are unique and have valuable knowledge about many subjects or niche’s, that you may have not even considered and the only way that you are going to flush these niche’s out is to begin writing them down.  Take a few days to garner this list and when you think of something that you love, write it down. Think of your childhood, think of your job, think of your hobbies, think of technologies or special interests, do whatever it takes to think of possible areas of interest.

Do you have special skills that you’ve developed on the job which you can considered valuable? What about your family background? Is there something unique there that can provide a business which can add value to someone else’s life? Are there hobbies that you use to be involved in that you really enjoyed that you may be able to capitalize on? These are all things you should consider when building your list.  Why is this list so important?  Your greatest chance of success and seeing your ideas through to completion rely on you loving the product or subject that are going to produce and sell.  I firmly believe that this is where the entrepreneurial spirit excels and where innovation shines in building a business that will reap huge profits.

So get your list going, and don’t stop evaluating where your interests are until you know in your heart that you have a winning idea. Once you have your top five ideas nailed down, you will next need to evaluate your competition in those markets and come to a conclusion where the greatest need is and fill that need!

Until next time… get that list and we will begin discussing evaluating your niche markets and sizing up your competition.