Objectives of knowledge management

2
 
Search intermediaries
These are the main search engines in each country. Typically they are Google, Yahoo!, 
Microsoft Live Search and Ask, but others are important in some markets such as 
China (Baidu), Russia (Yandex) and South Korea (Naver). You can use audience panel 
data from different providers indicated in Box 2.1 to find out their relative importance 
in different countries. The Google Trends tool (Figure 2.5) is a free tool for assessing 
site popularity and the searches used to find sites and how they vary seasonally, which 
is useful for student assignments. The example in Figure 2.5 shows relative preference 
for three social networks.
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Part 1
Introduction
Figure 2.5
Google Trends – useful for consumer interest in products
Source: 
http://www.google.com/trends/.
Choi and Varian (2009) note that Google Trends data on search volumes through 
time is very useful for predicting levels of spending. They argue that ‘because Google 
Trends data are practically available in real time, any statistical relationship between 
actual sales and Google Trends can be exploited to produce more timely estimates of 
consumer demand’.
Companies need to know which sites are effective in harnessing search traffic and 
either partner with them or try to obtain a share of the search traffic using the search 
engine marketing and affiliate marketing techniques explained in Chapter 9. Well‑ known, 
trusted brands which have developed customer loyalty are in a good position to succeed 
online since a common consumer behaviour is to go straight to the site through entering a 
URL, a bookmark, email or searching for the brand or URL. Hitwise provides this type of 
insight, as shown in Table 2.1. Through evaluating the type and volume of phrases used to 
search for products in a given market it is possible to calculate the total potential oppor‑
tunity and the current share of search terms for a company. ‘
Share of search
’ can be 
determined from web analytics reports from the company site which indicate the precise 
key phrases used by visitors to actually reach a site.