Microsoft, yep Microsoft (MSN), has an AMAZING keyword research tool. Not only will it give you the actual monthly impressions (unlike Google Trends), but it will also give you some demographics of the keywords, such as age and gender. Now use this with Google Trends (for country and state targeting), and dang, you’re getting some nice research directly from the search engines. Compare this data with known search engine market shares, and you should be able to predict Google and Yahoo. Cool.
Quantcast is a great site that allows you to freely view statistics about websites. It’s been featured in a number of media and has an impressive track record. Once you type in a URL, the summary page is presente, which contains information like:
- Traffic overview
- Composition
- Subdomains
- U.S. demographics
- Similar audience sites
- Keywords
The other available tab is “U.S. Demographics, which breaks down, into some really neat charts and graphs, the demographics of the website. I looked up some sites where I’m familiar with the demographics and it was pretty darn close.
I’ll definitely be using this site to study competing website. Also, to be a little random, some of my other new favorite websites are mint and hulu.
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