April 8, 2009

With Twitter all the rage, I decided to try searching for the phase “how to Twitter.”  I wanted to see if Twitter was invading mainstream America, as I suspect it is beginning to do.  I chose the phrase “how to Twitter” because that is a typical phrase a newbie might research if trying to figure out how to use Twitter.

I searched just in the United States, over the past 12 months.

As you can see from the following chart, the search volume for the phrase “how to Twitter” has ratcheted up just since the beginning of 2009.  That gives you some indication of how the interest in Twitter is growing.

Then I looked at the map of the United States, to see which states had people searching for the phrase “how to Twitter,” and it looks like this.

As you can see, the activity is centered in 16 states, with the top ten states being:  Washington, California, Arizona, Colorado, Texas, New York, Georgia, Ohio, Missouri and Pennsylvania. 

The darker blue the state, the higher the search volume for the phrase in that particular state.  States colored light blue effectively had no search volume.

 So is this a scientific survey?  No, it isn’t.  Google makes no claims of that.

But it is a useful and fun tool.  If you’re trying to conduct some quick market research online, Google Insights for Search could be one valuable data point that you collect.  The tool is simple to use.  It’s fast.  And because it’s so interactive, you’ll have loads of fun with it.

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Anita Campbell, Article, Google Insights, Twitter