What are people searching for online?
Do you ever review the top searches to see exactly what people are trying to find somewhere in the vast Interweb?
Tonight I was surfing around a few sites and the Top Searches box on the Yahoo home page caught my eye. Are there really that many people searching for macaroni and cheese recipes?
Most of the other top search terms are understandable, such as AIDS, ESPY Awards or the new popular show John From Cincinnati. But macaroni and cheese recipes?
Maybe there is untapped market there. I’d never really given much thought to macaroni and cheese as I either make the box of Kraft Mac-n-Cheese for the kids or will sometimes make a homemade version by cooking up some noodles and then melting Velveeta cheese into the noodles. My wife has a few other varieties as well but I’d never really considered that people would be searching for recipes.
Lately I have been in the habit checking the latest hot trends at Google as well. This has been an interesting thing to do because every now and then it will provide a few ideas for a new post on your site – kind of like seeing macaroni and cheese recipes prompted me to write this post.
Something I have noticed with the Hot Trends is the frequency with which names that are mentioned on the Howard Stern show appear. When I am driving into work each morning, I am typically listening to the Stern show on my Sirius radio and when he has a guest on the show or they are talking about something specific I can pretty much guarantee that I will see that on the Hot Trends for the day.
Do you ever review the Hot Trends or Top Searches to get a feel for what people are searching for on the Interweb? Have you ever let that influence what you post about?
Please share your thoughts while I head off to make some macaroni and cheese…
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ve looked at googe Trends and also Technorati for the top daily searches. Sometimes it gives me decent ideas for blogging. I was amazed recently at how much Hitch was in the top. It’s not even a recent movie? Trends are wierd.
It is funny because I used to look up search trends daily until I figured out that sometimes it could take weeks before my page would get indexed and then by then people have moved on to other subjects. So now I just write about what I like.
a.m.e.n to that brother
At one time I would glance at what the most searched terms were for a given day, but I soon stopped when I realized that either I’m completely out of touch with the world, or the world is completely out of touch with what matters.
Rather than find out which one is more accurate, I just decided it’s safer to find what I’m looking for and move on 😛
MMM well anything is possible lol when checked my stats last week there was someone who actually Google searched my name from I think the west coast. So what time is dinner LOL.
I am always on the lookout for the next best recipe for a good batch of mac and cheese. It is America’s true comfort food. At least one of my three boys asks for “noodles” during the course of a day.
No really, I haven’t been checking out search trends on a regular basis as of late but do find them pretty interesting (as you have pointed out). But then again I always seem to be behind the times…I mean I’m still a Hootie fan…right? 🙂
@Damien :: That is kind of odd to see Hitch in the latest trends but it just goes to show that anything can become the hot topic at any given time.
@Bill :: Absolutely, you need to write about the things you want to write about. Otherwise the whole concept of blogging becomes too much like work and not enough fun.
@Jason :: Very interesting perspective! 😆 Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts.
@Joe :: It’s always interesting to review your site stats to see what kind of interesting things bring people to your site. Awhile ago I had a contest about the most unique long tail. Dinner is at a different time every day in the summer. 🙂
@Chris :: So you would have been the other person at the Hootie show in Orlando! 😉
Fantastic! Great information, gotta love the Mac and Cheese….Here is a similar article in philosophyLow Fat Dinner Recipes
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