As we enter December, it signals the end of another year on the web. Google's official blog recently posted an article titled Zeitgeist 2010 How World Searched to summarize the year in search.
The article detailed the most popular search phrases of 2010 entered into Google's search engine. Some of the frequent search queries for the year were no surprise as phrases regarding the World Cup, Haiti earthquake and gadgets such as the iPad and iPhone 4 dominated the list.
There were some surprises for me however as the 2010 fastest rising search phrase on Google was “chatroulette” which is a Russian-based chat website that pairs two random users together in an audio/video and text-based chat system. I had no idea what this was until I read the blog.
The data contained within the blog also shows the fastest falling search phrases compared to the previous year. Some of these phrases included “swine flu”, “circuit city” and “myspace layouts”. None of these are very suprising.
This information is interesting but as blog owner wishing to generate as much traffic to my site as possible, data can also be valuable from an SEO perspective for two primary reasons:
1. It shows that there are certain search phrases that I should have targeted but didn't. My blog focuses on new technologies so I was surprised to see “Otterbox”, “Nokia N900″, and “Blackberry Apps” listed in the Top 10 Fastest Rising Consumer Electronics segment. It just goes to show that even if you think you know a market segment such as technology, there is always more to learn.
2. Google claims “20% of our queries are new each day”. That is a mind blowing statement but one that should be taken to heart. Internet users are looking for the latest information possible. That means your blog site must continually be posting fresh and timely articles. You need to figure out what people are interested in, figure out a unique angle and publish it as quickly as possible. Now that Google has the ability to find and index pages in a matter of minutes, every second counts.
So while Google's Zeitgeist for 2010 can be entertaining to look back at what people were interested in for the year, we can also learn a great deal from an SEO perspective so your 2011 will be that much better.
Article first published as Provide Better SEO Today by Looking at Yesterday on Technorati.
