Rise of the search verticals - time for more keywords!

Posted by Owen Powis on 31 Mar, 2016
View comments Wordtracker News
Over the past few years something has happened in search. Something big. Read on to find out just why we’ve added YouTube and Amazon keywords.

What if I said you could create a successful ecommerce business without ever appearing in Google?

You’d look at me funny right? Well you certainly might have in the past. But now the landscape has changed and some of the e-commerce behemoths have grown to the size that it's possible to be successful regardless of whether you appear in Google’s rankings or not. If you’re selling through these sites then they come with their own audience and search mechanisms.

44% of web shoppers go directly to Amazon for purchases
http://recode.net/2015/10/05/amazon-is-absolutely-eviscerating-other-retailers-online-new-survey-shows/

Goodbye Google dominance, hello search verticals. The verticals are the different internal search engines through which the big sites such as Amazon, ebay, YouTube and others now capture massive amounts of searches. Google no longer controls the market.


http://www.statista.com/statistics/237810/number-of-active-amazon-customer-accounts-worldwide/

This phenomenon isn't limited to ecommerce either. Think about how many times your quest to find the latest movie trailer, a how-to guide you needed or even a product review started off at YouTube rather than Google.

We simply grab the nearest device and search—and not just on Google. Searches related to "how to" on YouTube are growing 70% year over year
https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/articles/i-want-to-do-micro-moments.html

Wordtracker is ready to help you capitalise on this

We see this as an amazing opportunity. It’s no longer about the unhealthy dominance of a single search engine. This is why we are introducing Amazon and YouTube keywords into Wordtracker's keyword tool. We'll also be bringing you more how to guides and articles on how to leverage these markets. So now you can tap into these markets and start thinking vertically.

We’ve always promoted our own data source, rather than just relying on Google data. It provides you with a better mix of data and a fuller understanding of the landscape. Now we’re extending this.

So how does it work?

The keywords for Amazon and YouTube seen within the tool are generated from suggest data. We then add volume figures for these terms from our Google data within the tool. This means you have one set of volumes across these three sources. You'll also see we have dropped 'SEMRush' in favour of displaying 'Google'. Although the way we get the data has changed, hence the name change, the actual results are comparable.

Having a single volume source means you can generate lists of keywords across sources which are easily comparable. However it also has its downside in that the volumes we show for Youtube and Amazon are a guide only. Whilst these should give you a very strong indicator of the popularity of the keywords it’s not giving you the actual number of searches within those sources.

The number of results you get isn’t set as a hard limit, but rather depends on the keywords you use. This will rarely go over 300 returned from Amazon and 600 from YouTube. You may see slightly more or less depending on the exact terms you are using.

The keywords are refreshed periodically depending on the popularity of the keywords that are searched rather than against a set time limit. The data should always be fresh and representative.

Will it cost any more?

Nope, nothing, not a cent. We're adding all this in without changing the pricing of the plans at all. We're even adding CPC data into the Google results as well. Wordtracker limits for pasting in keywords remain the same.  For the new data, we've limited searching on keywords pasted in to Exact search, but so have been able to increase the limits well above what they were previously, so you can search on larger lists.

This is the breakdown of seed terms and territories for the new data:

Bronze
seeds: 50 at a time
countries: top 6 (Currently US only for YouTube and Amazon)
Silver
seeds: 500
countries: all available (Currently US only for YouTube and Amazon)
Gold
seeds: 1,000
countries: all available (Currently US only for YouTube and Amazon)

Help us make it better...

We want to add more sources into the tool. In fact if there are other search verticals which you would like to see added then please do let us know in the comments below. Also if you spot any bugs, errors or inconsistencies in the data let us know. We've tested extensively and are constantly refining and want your input in doing so.

We will continue working on getting you the best data we can and making sure you can keep ahead of the curve.

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