Market Research with Google Adwords tools

Google Insights

Web Search
in the United States
"Education" category

Trend on "homeschool" & "home school"
Last 12 months



since 2004



"homeschool curriculum"
last 12 months



since 2004




"Lesson Planner"
Last 12 months



since 2004




"Lesson Plan"
last 12 months



since 2004



You can see from these charts that the trend is steadily down since 2004. 2004 was anomalously high for homeschool, and the most significant drop after that coincides with the current recession, but overall it's not great news. I believe there will be an upswing in homeschooling though. I'm surprised that search is down with the recession, since it isn't necessarily an economic activity (but maybe it's measuring adwords clicks)

One interesting find (but not surprising when you think about it) is that August is by far the biggest month for Homeschool and Lesson Plan related searches. An ideal time to launch a product marketing campaign, and well situated with my schedule. I should have a prototype then and prepare to market.

It turns out that "homeschool" is preferred over "home school" which is what I thought, but "lesson plan" vastly trumps "lesson planner". I don't know if that is because lesson plan is equated with "curriculum" while "planner" is related with a tool or template.

There wasn't enough data to graph "Lesson Plan" in the Education -> Homeschooling category, which might be ominous.

Doing adwords research (which I'll cover in depth later -- I don't have the numbers with me now) also showed interest in lesson planner templates which at first seemed like a bad term to buy, but I'm reconsidering since Apple Blossom is squarely set to replace the "template" with an application. It remains to be seen if people looking for a template would prefer to stay on paper or not. -- I'll go post a survey.

For a teaser, here's a great link on using google adwords for market research.

http://www.seobook.com/market-research-using-adwords