Commune Media | Measurably Effective Digital Marketing™

Find and grow a profitable niche with Google Trends

Posted on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 at 1:43 AM by Simon Smith  |  Comments (0)

Successful internet marketers know that finding a profitable niche and high-traffic keywords are foundations of a moneymaking online business.

Leave it to Google to help with both—and, of course, for free.

The secret, if you haven’t used it yet, is Google Trends.

Like the coolest kid at school, it always knows what’s hot and what’s not.

Identify new niches

Why develop products and services only to find nobody wants them?

Google Trends lets you find emerging markets by tracking searches. So you can create products and services for under-served customers.

And instantly. Just visit the Google Trends homepage and see what’s hot.

For example, right now, "tapeworm" is the number one search on Google:

You probably never thought about creating products to help people fight tapeworms.

But the market, and the profit, might be there.

Validate potential niches

Of course, you should probably validate that there’s long-term interest in tapeworms.

And here’s another astounding use for Google Trends.

Just visit the site, enter keywords and see how interest in them has changed over time.

A search for "tapeworm" reveals that, in fact, there has been steady interest, with occasional spikes like today’s:

Target rising keywords

Once you validate your niche, you can also use Google Trends to determine what keywords to target.

For example, at Commune we offer web writing services.

People looking for "web writing" might also search for "online writing," "writing for the web" and "website writing."

Using Google Trends, we can see how searches for these different keywords have changed over time.

What we learn is that "online writing" has the greatest sustained traffic:

So if you’re growing an online business, or starting a new one, you might want to spend some time analyzing trends. (Did I mention it’s addictively fun?)

And if you’ve already started? Post your examples or tips in the comments below.

Tags: featured, google trends, internet marketing, keywords, niche marketing