The majority of website owners in the know recognise that keyword research and keeping informed on online trends can be vital to their success and overall online presence. Knowing what your target market are looking at can help you create content and information that fills a gap and sends more customers to your site.
But what if you are selling things online rather then just providing content?
Online retailers are often perfectly placed to turn this kind of information directly into profit as soon as it happens. However, fortunately, there are only a handful of companies that fully monitor and gauge whats happening out there to maximise their sales.
Google Insights for Search
URL: http://www.google.com/insights/search/
Not surprising, my first point was to Google to find the trends. It does take some poking around to find the data you want. Instead of comparing two terms, the secret to finding what products are currently “hot” online is to completely ignore the keyword selections and just select from the locations radio button. The results are interesting and allow you to specify categories which allows you access to a different niche. For example selecting ‘Technology’ showed that searches for ‘Windows 7′ were currently extremely hot in the trends, and that demand exists out there for this at the minute.

The other obvious advantage to this tool, is that you can specify regions, so if you only do business for certain products in certain parts of the world, you can drill down to find the popular products there and then.
Conclusion
Whilst instinct, attending tradeshows and personal taste are great ways of working out what to buy for next season, it also makes sense to supplement these decisions with the data from the wider internet community as well. Algorithms that exist on your competitors websites to maximise sales, can just as easily be turned around to your advantage and help you understand what is hot and what is not.
What ways do you best keep your finger on what products are making an impact?







