New Marketing Tool: Yahoo! Clues

"Welcome to Yahoo! Clues

Explore how people are using Yahoo!"

... and apparently that's what Yahoo! Clues is all about.

In a nutshell, Yahoo! Clues (still in Beta) is a keyword research tool that allows the public to analyze "trends" of a particular search word. Based on historical search activities, Yahoo! Clues compiles a report that indicates the popularity of any given word in their search engine. Data provided by the site is categorized by search over time, demographics, location, search flow, related searches, etc.

For example, if you click on the Yahoo! Clues link, you will be directed to a Yahoo! Clues page with the word "fantasy football" already selected for analysis. (It is possible that you may be directed to a different search keyword, but that's probably because Yahoo is trying to guess what word you might want to analyze. Such prediction is based on your past search history and other personal information you may not have voluntarily divulged.) Scroll down the page and you will learn that the keyword "fantasy footbal" is most commonly searched by men between the age of 25 to 34 (37% of search), which is fitting considering the appeal of fantasy football.

How is this a marketing tool, you ask?

Yahoo! Clue can help marketers conduct consumer research. It helps marketers gain a better understanding of the consumers that they are trying to reach and narrow the pool down to the ones with the most potential.

Lets take "fantasy football" for example...

Pretend that you are an application developer with an app for fantasy football to be released in three months. First thing you would do as part of your marketing strategy is to identify search words that will lead potential customers to your product. Once you identify those words, you would want to know the type of people who search for those words in search engines. That way you can craft appropriate campaigns that target those specific people.

Best part of all of this is that the data is accessible free and without any subscription.

In case you are still curious about Yahoo! Clues, Business Review USA wrote a pretty short article that gets right to the point. ReelSEO also wrote a pretty lengthy article on it. If you're still curious, try typing "Yahoo! Clues" into your Google search box. Let's hope that your computer doesn't blow up in the process.