Reading search demand with free tools

Search data shows what clients want, when they want it and in what words, before they ever contact you. Learn to read Google autocomplete, Google Trends and Keyword Planner as market research, estimate how much demand exists for a service, and know where the numbers mislead.

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Reading search demand with free tools.

Every day, people in your area type their plans into a search box.

“Day of coordinator cost.” “Halal caterer Mississauga.” “Magician for office party.” Taken together, those searches are the largest free market survey you will ever have access to.

Search data as market research.

The search module later in the course uses keywords to build pages.

Here, the question is different.

Autocomplete: the words clients use.

Start with the simplest tool.

Open a private browser window, go to Google and type the start of a phrase slowly: “wedding planner”, then “wedding planner cost”, then “wedding planner vs”.

Google Trends: timing and direction.

Google Trends shows how interest in a search term changes over time, compared with all searches in that place and period.

Google scales the data from 0 to 100, where 100 is the peak of interest for the terms and period you chose.

Keyword Planner: a rough size.

Google Keyword Planner sits inside Google Ads, so you need an account to use it.

It gives estimates of how many searches a keyword gets each month, plus ideas for related terms.

Worked example: is day-of coordination worth pushing?.

Priya wanted to know whether Lantern and Lane should promote its 1,900 dollars day-of coordination package.

Marco spent an hour on research.

That is the lesson. The worksheet and the quiz are just below this video.

What you will be able to do

• Use autocomplete and related searches to collect the words clients use for your services
• Read Google Trends to compare services, spot seasonal peaks and check long-term direction
• Turn a Keyword Planner estimate into a rough monthly inquiry forecast and judge its reliability

Every day, people in your area type their plans into a search box. “Day of coordinator cost.” “Halal caterer Mississauga.” “Magician for office party.” Taken together, those searches are the largest free market survey you will ever have access to. You cannot see who searched, and you should not want to. But you can see what they asked, roughly how often, and when. That tells you which services have demand, which are growing, and what words to use when you talk about them.

Search data as market research

The search module later in the course uses keywords to build pages. Here, the question is different. You are not yet deciding what to write. You are deciding what the market wants. Four questions guide the research.

1. Is there demand? Do people search for this service at all in your area?
2. When is it? Which months does interest rise and fall?
3. Which way is it moving? Is interest growing, flat or shrinking over several years?
4. What words do they use? What do clients call the thing you sell?

Three free tools answer most of this. Each has a different strength, and each misleads in its own way.

Autocomplete: the words clients use

Start with the simplest tool. Open a private browser window, go to Google and type the start of a phrase slowly: “wedding planner”, then “wedding planner cost”, then “wedding planner vs”. Write down every suggestion. Then search each one and scroll to the related searches and the questions people also ask.

Try the alphabet trick: type your service followed by each letter of the alphabet, such as “photo booth a”, “photo booth b”, and note what appears. In thirty minutes you will have dozens of real phrases. Look for patterns: price questions, comparisons, worries, and words you never use yourself. If clients search for “banquet hall” and your site only says “event venue”, you have learned something.

Google Trends: timing and direction

Google Trends shows how interest in a search term changes over time, compared with all searches in that place and period. Google scales the data from 0 to 100, where 100 is the peak of interest for the terms and period you chose. It does not show how many people searched.

Three settings matter most.

• Region. Set it to Canada, then narrow to Ontario. Trends can show data down to city-level geography where there is enough volume.
• Time range. Use the past five years to see seasonality and long-term direction. One year of data can hide a trend.
• Comparison. Add up to several terms at once to see their relative interest on the same scale.

Read the shape, not the exact numbers. A line that peaks every January and dips every August is seasonal. A line that rises steadily over five years is a growing market. A term that shows mostly zeros simply does not have enough volume for Trends to report.

Keyword Planner: a rough size

Google Keyword Planner sits inside Google Ads, so you need an account to use it. It gives estimates of how many searches a keyword gets each month, plus ideas for related terms. Treat its figures as an order of magnitude, not a count. Very low-volume keywords are not shown, which is common for niche event services in a single city.

You can turn an estimate into a rough inquiry forecast with three assumptions:

Monthly inquiries = monthly searches x share of searchers who click on you x share of visitors who inquire

Worked example: is day-of coordination worth pushing?

Priya wanted to know whether Lantern & Lane should promote its $1,900 day-of coordination package. Marco spent an hour on research. All figures are illustrative.

1. Autocomplete showed that people type “day of coordinator”, “month of coordinator” and “wedding coordinator cost Toronto”, not “day-of coordination package”. The studio’s own term was not the clients’ term.
2. Google Trends for Ontario over five years showed “day of coordinator” peaking each winter and rising gently year over year, while interest in the broader “wedding planner” stayed flat.
3. Keyword Planner estimated about 500 monthly searches across the coordinator phrases in the GTA.

Then the forecast. If Lantern & Lane could earn clicks from 10 percent of those searchers, and 6 percent of visitors inquired: 500 x 0.10 x 0.06 = 3 inquiries a month. At the studio’s booking rate of about 25 percent, that is 0.75 bookings a month, or about 9 a year. At $1,900 each, roughly $17,100 a year.

That number is not a promise. Each assumption could easily be half or double. But it told Priya and Marco that the demand was real and growing, that they should use the word “coordinator” rather than “coordination package”, and that a page built for the phrase was worth a few hours of work. That page is a job for the search module.

Reading the numbers honestly

Use this checklist before you trust any conclusion from search data:

• Did you check more than one tool, and do they agree on direction?
• Did you look at five years, not one?
• Are you comparing similar terms, in the same region and period?
• Have you remembered that many clients never search, because they ask a friend or a venue?
• Have you written down your forecast assumptions, so you can test them against real inquiries?
• Does the result fit what you heard in customer interviews? If not, find out why.

Search demand measures only one kind of demand: the kind that already exists and is looking. Services clients have never heard of will show little search interest no matter how good they are. For those, the low numbers are a sign that you will need to create demand, not a sign that nobody wants the service.

In Canada and the GTA

Small numbers are normal here. Canada’s population is a fraction of the United States’, and a single service in a single Ontario city often has too little search volume for the tools to report well. Google says Trends only shows data for popular terms, and terms with low volume appear as zero. Keyword Planner does not show very low-volume keywords either. Do not mistake a zero for no demand. Widen the region from a city to Ontario or Canada to see the shape of interest, broaden the phrase, or compare your term with a better-known one to see its relative size. Google’s Trends data FAQ explains how the scale works, and notes that regions with the same search interest do not always have the same total volume.

Do not use American data by mistake. Most free tools and blog posts default to the United States. Wedding seasons, holidays, vocabulary and prices differ. Thanksgiving in Canada is in October, not November. Clients here search for “banquet halls” and “stag and doe” parties in ways American data will not reflect. Always set the region to Canada, Ontario or a GTA city before you read anything. The same goes for prices you find in search results: an American blog’s average cost of a wedding planner says nothing about Toronto.

Region by region. The GTA’s regions search differently. Interest in large banquet halls, multi-day wedding services and certain cuisines tends to be stronger in the areas where those communities live. Trends’ regional view, and Keyword Planner’s location settings, let you compare Toronto with Mississauga, Brampton, Vaughan or Markham where volume allows. Use that to decide where to focus service-area pages and partner outreach, and check it against your own inquiry data.

Languages and spelling

Many GTA clients search in languages other than English, or mix English with words from another language, especially for cultural ceremonies, food and music. Search for the terms your interviewees used, in the spelling they used, and add them to your research. If your business serves Ottawa or eastern Ontario, or national companies, check French terms too, such as the French words for caterer, wedding planner and reception hall. Canadian and American spellings sometimes split search interest as well, so check both versions of a word.

The tools and the rules

Keyword Planner and advertising. Keyword Planner is part of Google Ads. Its forecasts, according to Google, are refreshed daily, based on the last seven to ten days and adjusted for seasonality, and actual results can differ. That makes them useful for timing but unreliable for exact budgets. Google’s Keyword Planner help page explains the features. If you later run ads, note that Google’s Local Services Ads, the pay-per-lead format, are available only in certain categories, and the categories Google lists for Canada are home services, not event services. Event businesses use standard search ads instead, covered in Module 12.

Privacy. Trends and Keyword Planner show aggregated data, not individuals, so using them raises no privacy issue. Your own website analytics and Search Console data are different only when you combine them with names from your inquiry list. If you do, PIPEDA applies to that combined personal information, as it does to the rest of your client records.

Honest claims. If you quote search data in your marketing, such as “the most searched planner in Mississauga”, it must be true and provable. The Competition Act prohibits representations to the public that are false or misleading in a material respect, and relative Trends data rarely proves a claim like that. Keep research as research.

This is general information, not legal advice. Check the official sources named here, or ask a lawyer, for your own situation.

Worksheet

Download the worksheet and complete it for your own business, using Lantern & Lane as the model where it helps. Keep it with your marketing plan. It takes about 10 minutes.

Download the worksheet (PDF)