Google and the Steel Industry, How People Search

Search engines have become an integral part of people's

daily lives and day to day business activities.

Whether it's seeking out products or services, doing research or finding

contact information, search engines dictate who gets found, where and why. With this in mind, we decided to take a look

within the steel industry to see what gets searched most often, and any trends

in how those terms are sought out.

Overall volume for these terms from August 2008 to July 2009

was estimated as follows:

What came out of the result was an interesting collection of

"steel" related keywords and some interesting trends in the search volume for

those terms, like a surge in demand for the term "stainless steel" in April and June.



What does this mean to steel related businesses? Well, that depends. For many, it can be an eye opener to the

amount of demand there is for information for products and services. For others, it might be enlightening as to

the importance of grasping an opportunity to control the conversation through

making your site more available for search.

For example, the spike in late summer of 2008 for the term "steel prices"

correlates almost perfectly to the spike in steel prices (below).


(chart courtesy of: http://www.ttiinc.com/object/ME_Materials_Steel)

The surge in demand likely meant a lot of things to a lot of

different people and organizations, but questions on steel prices, and the

conversation that surrounded it was influenced heavily by the top search

results for that keyword. While

outsiders may think of the steel industry as a very traditional one, it is very

clear that the Internet is a valuable tool for those seeking out steel related

information, products and services.

Our methodology for assembling this data was as follows:

• 
  
  Utilize Google Keyword Tool's general query
  
  results for the term steel to provide all recommended related terms and volume
  
  estimates.
• 
  
  Based on Google's June volume estimates, the
  
  Microsoft Ad Intelligence tool was used to estimate volumes over the last
  
  twelve months.

A look at search engine demand for the top ten steel related

terms over the past twelve months. Based

on the equation developed by Distilled

and shared at SEOMoz,

the Microsoft numbers were converted into an overall search market estimate for

each month.

This

report was originally published on the Capital Steel & Wire website at: http://www.capitalsteel.net/blog/on-the-search-for-steel. Special thanks to Netvantage Marketing for providing

additional research.