Is Your Market Researcher Some Yahoo Named Google?

I love that title. It isn’t mine. I actually stole it from an entrepreneurial conference that I heard about in the States a few years ago. I was also inspired to write this Blog posting after reading Kate Trgovac from My Name Is Kate and her posting, Satisfying Blogger Egos … Even More Tools. Kate has some great insights into what we, as marketers, need to be paying attention to. Why does this matter? It’s not about ego surfing (although that does give you a decent indication as to whether or not your new marketing tactics are working), but more importantly, it’s an ideal market research tool.
It got me thinking. Then it got me PowerPointing. I put together a handful of slides on how to do market research online.
Here’s what I came up with:
1. Check with Alexa how something ranks (don’t forget to check out Related Links).
2. Check out the Google PageRank.
3. Load up on Google News Alerts.
4. Use Google to snoop around (try typing in a URL and then click on the “Find pages that contain the term” link to see who is linking in to that website).
5. Try Google Suggests or Overture Keyword Selector Tool to see which keywords and keyphrases related to your space consumers are looking for.
6. Pay attention to places like Technorati and Bloglines. If people are talking about you (or your competitor), you should be paying close attention.
7. Get a feed. If you don’t know about RSS or have an RSS reader, you’re completely in the dark.
8. Pay attention. Doing it once is not good enough. Block off time every few days to check out what the world is saying about you and your competition.
Did I miss any cool tools? Let me know, I’ll add them to the list.