Yahoo! has upgraded its Clues feature which they first introduced in November, 2010. This free service gives you a ‘behind the scenes’ look into popular search trends.
Top Trends, a key new feature, allows you to endlessly explore the most popular search terms on Yahoo! Search. Using filter selections, you can choose a combination of time range, gender, age group and geographic location, and even search term category – and Top Trends shows you what’s popular.
(Image Credit : Yahoo Search Blog)
According to the Yahoo Search Blog, there are four major features in this new version :
- New site design – Clues now includes a home page with navigation to the Top Trends and Trend Analysis features.
- More data – Expanded history from one month to over 12 months, and covering over three times as many search terms as the previous release.
- Global coverage – All English-language searches globally are available.
- New map – Trend Analysis includes a brand new map that puts the data at the center of the experience with beautiful heat map visualizations.
The trends you can examine for ‘specified groups’ include residents of specific regions, searchers of various demographics, or people searching for terms related to a specific category.
Commenting on the new Clues, Search Engine Watch says, “More than one specification can be set, allowing users to set the gender, age range, region, and other data simultaneously. Information on the most searched for terms then populates, and users have access to contextualizing information (what searches look like in other regions, what topics are trending for a specific key term category, etc.).”
This highly tunable trend data is a huge leap forward for Yahoo. The data now present will allow webmasters to hunt for very niche search information. Local business sites will likely get the most out of the advances, since they can tune precisely to the search terms and trends of those in their region.
Brian Theodore, Yahoo! Director of Search Products says in the Yahoo Search Blog, “As I discussed with Vera H-C during SXSW Interactive earlier this year, analyzing search trends helps us understand the impulses and processes of why people make their choices at that particular moment in time. Furthermore, the massive global scale of Yahoo! Search activity provides a unique ability to instantly poll a huge sample size of our users to spot future trends or dig into what is popular.”
You can access all the new features at the newly upgraded Yahoo Clues beta site.