Information Search

INTRODUCTION

The concept of the GFP matrix was developed to understand what constitutes the characteristics of a mature gluten free market and how different communities approach searching for gluten free products. This article explores the differences between Australia and the US and key European communities.

So far in the research of markets there has been a relatively straight line trend on the GFP matrix for a countries gluten free market development. That is, countries in early stages of celiac detection have had a relatively low number of gluten related searches (per head of celiac population) and a low % of their gluten free searches devoted to a group classified as ‘generic gluten free product’ searches. The second highest group is usually celiac related with one or two terms taking up the majority of searches. The other groups are often a much smaller proportion of the top 50 searches.

Group Composition:

• Generic GF Product: This group of search terms all involve the word gluten and are generic in nature, such a gluten, gluten free, gluten free products, gluten free meals
• Gluten Diet: These are terms that are related to the specifics of gluten free diets such as: gluten free diets, celiac diet.
• Gluten Free recipe: Terms such as gluten free recipes, gluten recipe, gluten free baking, wheat free baking
• Celiac related: These are terms related to Information on the disease such as: celiac, celiac disease, gluten intolerance, gluten allergies
• Wheat free: Terms such as: wheat free, wheat gluten, wheat allergy
• Locations: gluten free stores, gluten free shopping, gluten free restaurant
• GF Specific Foods: gluten free bread, gluten free pizza, gluten free cakes, gluten free muffins

It was theorised that the high percentage of generic searches was because as markets reach higher levels of development (high searches relative to population) they increase the number of generic searches. This is because they have found that in a developed market, gluten free product websites tend to be ‘one stop shops’ where they can search for specific items inside of the site.

While most European communities show a very low number of gluten related searches and so are very undeveloped/ undiagnosed – the low generic search group proportion  rule doesn’t hold well for many of the European countries studied. This may be because at a very low search rate there is high volatility and heterogeneous search patterns by locals, long term celiacs, newly diagnosed celiacs and foreigners. In these communities an amendment to the rule is that the high % generic searches can still exist in low search countries, however as the total generic group % increases, so does the % of one or two core generic terms inside of that groups searches, which is part of the expected GFP Matrix trend.

The trend also still holds true that in high raw search value communities there tends to be a high level of generic searches followed by the celiac group searches. And each group tends to have one or two high one or two word general terms that dominate the group.

This does not necessarily apply to Russia because its low raw search values may be artificially inflated by its low Google market share and internet penetration adjusting its search values very high. Relatively high search values in a small search population could be attributed to either very newly diagnosed voracious gluten searchers or an established diagnosed group – noting that there is a stark comparison between the Russian English speaking and Russian speaking community search profiles.

SUMMARY

Compared to countries previously analysed, the Europe communities were VERY closely clustered together on the GFP Matrix. While the % of ‘generic gluten free’ terms ranged from 30% to near 90% they all fell within 0.2 to 0.8 searches (adjusted) per celiac per month range – except for the UK and Russia. The lower celiac search communities typically also did not have enough terms to fill the Google search term cut off of 200 terms.

While a value of ONE search per celiac per month may seem very low, it should be considered that potentially only 10% to 20% of celiacs have been diagnosed even in highly developed countries, and of those who have been diagnosed maybe only 50% or less regularly search for gluten free terms. This could mean that even for the adjusted (values increased taking into account Google market share and internet penetration) search values calculated, the celiac search values could be only 10% of the actual current average search values of celiacs. For examples, an adjusted value of 2.2 (diagnosed and undiagnosed) ‘searches per celiac per month’ for UK celiacs could equate to 10 to 20 average searches performed each month by actual current diagnosed celiacs.

In the analysis, searches were adjusted for Google market share and internet penetration to estimate the number of celiac (divide population by 100) searches per month in two communities in most European countries – local language and English. In the two highest % generic search term group communities, Germany and France, the English speaking communities used open phases such as ‘and gluten free’ and ‘gluten free in’ rather than the standard ‘gluten’ phrases that local language communities used.

The UK had the second highest ‘per celiac’ rating for Europe at 2.2 (adjusted) searches per celiac per month. This is nearly three times any other community analysed except for Russia. It also reinforced the GFP Rule that high celiac search countries tend to have a high percentage of generic gluten free group and in particular one to two very dominant generic terms.

RUSSIA has a very low Google market share and low internet penetration. But when it’s raw gluten free foods searches are adjusted for this, the combined Russian celiac search value, Russian and English speaking communities, had a very similar celiac search value to Australia and the US. On a community basis, ‘Russia – Russian Speaking’, had the highest celiac search of any country/ community so far analysed.

Russian English speaking had a total of 101 terms over 244 thousand searches in December 2008, while Russian, Russian speaking, had only 23 terms over 360 thousand searches. Like Mexico and Brazil, one of the more telling features of the Russian gluten free market was a comparison between specific gluten free foods for its local (Russian) community and its English speaking community. The Russian speaking community had very sizeable searches for food staples such as gluten free bread, gluten free cake and cookies. By comparison the Russia English speaking community had relatively sizeable searches for: pizza, beer, cakes and muffins.

For South American countries previously analysed, it was speculated that searches mainly for food staples in communities suggested a relatively low economic status while high searches for relative luxury items such as beer and pizza are often searched for by more affluent longer term celiacs within a community. While ‘cakes’ rated high in both Russian communities they are often considered as a social / family gathering necessity, rather than a luxury item. Again, it would appear that the English community in Russia search for more affluent items than the main country inhabits – Russian speaking Russians. There may be a correlation between learning to speak English, or being an English speaking ‘foreigner’ and higher economic wealth in Russia.

EUROPEAN COMMUNITY DETAILED ANALYSIS

UK

The largest group in the UK (English speaking) was the generic gluten free group with 10 terms comprising 51% of top 50 searches. Of the 376 thousand searches in this group the top two terms of gluten and gluten free comprised 89% of searches.

The celiac group was the second highest group at 26% of search volumes and out of its four terms, celiac and celiac disease accounted for 94% of volumes.

Wheat free group was the third highest group. Its five terms made up 12% of the top 50 searches or 86,000. The vast majority of this groups searches were from: ‘wheat free’ (49,500) and ‘wheat gluten’ 14,800 searches. This is consistent with the GFP Matrix rule of ‘high dominance by simple search terms’ in the leading groups – in high ‘per celiac’ search communities.

The fourth highest group was the ‘specific gluten free foods’ and its 13 terms made up 7% of the top 50 volumes. The top two terms were bread related (19,800) and gluten free cake (8,100).

GERMANY

Germany has a very high percentage of searches in the generic category, however it also has the lowest total number of searches per population of any community analysed in Europe. German speaking and English speaking communities in Germany also are the closest paired communities of any country. This suggests a close homogeneity for these languages in the gluten free community in Germany.

German is spoken across the country and English is taught in many schools so both languages should have relatively the same number of searches, and they do.

GERMAN, English Speaking

Has 80% of search terms in the generic group. The second highest category is gluten diet which as only 8%.  In the generic group there are 18 terms accounting for 55 thousand searches out of 70,000 top 50 searches. However rather than generic terms such as gluten, gluten free foods etc the top two terms are:

“and gluten free” (27,100)

“gluten free in” (18,100)

This suggests that these terms were part of some search that may have included a specific search term such as bread or wheat etc, but was not defined by Google data.

GERMAN, German speaking

The English language in Germany had a VERY similar profile to the German speaking profile. This is quite different to the two language profiles for Mexico and Brazil discussed in previous research which had very different profiles for the different language searches. The difference here maybe that whether Germans are German or English speaking, their socio economic status is similar, and so the things they search for are very similar.

Interestingly, not only is English speaking widespread in Germany, its number of gluten search terms is actually greater than the German searches. German language searches in Germany were only a total of 75 thousand for a total of 40 terms. Of these 83% of terms were generic gluten searches. HOWEVER, unlike the English searches, they did search for the most standard generic gluten free terms such as ‘gluten’, rather than convoluted ‘and gluten free’ terms. The second highest group in this community was ‘gluten diet’ with two terms accounting for 6% of total top 50 searches.

Of the specific gluten free foods the most popular was Oatmeal (2,900).

FRANCE

The French proximity to Germany might suggest a similar search profile and this is the case. Next to Germany, France has the highest % of generic gluten free term searches of all communities so far analysed and about double the amount of gluten free searches per head of population compared to Germany. That said, both these countries have nearly the lowest number of searches for the developed world (less than 0.2 searches per month).

FRANCE, English Speaking

The FRANCE, English speaking community has almost exactly the same profile and highest rating terms as Germany English speaking. Out of 91 thousand top 50 term searches, generic gluten free terms accounted for 69% (63 thousand searches). The top two terms were:

“and gluten free” (27,100)

“gluten free in” (18,100)

The second highest group was specific gluten foods at 8% of top 50 volumes or 7 thousand searches. Of these six terms, the three largest were: High gluten flour (3,600), and gluten free pizza crusts and gluten free brownies – 1,900 searches each.

FRANCE, French speaking

This group was very similar to German, German speaking, in that the generic gluten terms group accounted for 86% of top 50 searches or 139 thousand out of 167 thousand. Also its top terms were the same as German, German speaking: gluten term searches were 110,000. The second highest term was the same as German English speaking: “and gluten free” (27,100)

Like FRANCE, English speaking, the second highest group was the specific gluten free group. At 7% this ten term group accounted for 11 thousand searches. The top three terms were: ‘high gluten flour’ (3,600), ‘rye free’ and ‘gluten free oatmeal’ – 2,900 each.

It is noteworthy that these specific food terms are food staples rather than luxuries or social event foods such as cakes or cookies etc.

ITALY

This country was analysed for Italian and English speaking people. While Germany and France had low searches per head of population and a very high proportion of generic gluten searches, Italy had more generic search terms but a relatively low % of generic terms of the top 50.

ITALY English Speaking

The generic gluten free group only consisted 32% of searches of the top 50 terms. This equates to 26 thousand of the 84 thousand top 50 searches. Even though the proportion of generic gluten searches was low, there were 18 terms in this group. The terms were very evenly spread in search numbers with the top two being: gluten free dessert(s) (9,000); with 2,900 searches for gluten free meals and breakfasts each. This means that the top three terms were not the standard searches encountered in other communities such as ‘gluten’ and ‘gluten free products’.

The second and third highest groups were: Gluten diet (8 terms 29% searches) and ‘Specific GF foods’ ( 5 terms 18% top 50 searches). The gluten diet group was dominated by three four and five word terms rather than the basic terms like gluten diet found in the US and Australia.

The specific GF foods group, like France, was also mostly dominated by food staples: muffins (4,400), flour (3,600), oatmeal (2,900).

ITALY Italian Speaking

This had a more ‘expected’ generic food group % of 65% (66 thousand out of 103 thousand) however the 14 terms were again dominated by terms that looked like unfinished requests:

‘and gluten free’ (27,100)

‘gluten free in’ (18,100)

‘of gluten free’ (8,100)

The second highest group was ‘specific GF foods’ whose 8 terms comprised 16% of the total top 50 searches. The two highest terms were: Gluten free cookies (12,100) and ‘high gluten flour’ 3,600.

The third highest group was ‘GF locations’. It’s 22 terms made up 12% of top 50 searches (12 thousand searches). The group had a long low volume tail with the top three terms being: ‘gluten free restaurants in’ 4,400; ‘york gluten free’ 2,900 and ‘gluten free London’ 1,600.

SPAIN

Had a typically low celiac search value of 1.2 (English and Spanish speaking). Its 131 terms accounted for 158 thousand searches that with relatively low Google share and internet usage equated to an adjusted value of 532 thousand searches.

SPAIN, English speaking

With generic search terms only accounting for 39% of top 50 searches, this was one of the lowest values encountered for core European communities. The top 50 terms made up only 71 thousand searches. While the generic group had 17 terms, the top term gluten free dessert(s) was only searched for 9,000 times.

As was the trend for several other European Countries with low celiac per head searches, Spain English speaking’s second highest group was specific gluten free foods. Seven terms accounted for 21% of top 50 searches. The three highest terms were: gluten free muffins (4,400); high gluten flour (3,600) and ‘gluten free oatmeal (2,900).

Similarly to Italy, this community had a high proportion of Gluten free location group searches, with its four terms accounting for 18% of top 50 searches. The top two searches were: gluten free restaurants in’ (4,400) and ‘gluten free stores’ (4,400)

SPAIN, Spanish speaking

This community only had 28 gluten related searches accounting for 91 thousand searches. In complete contrast to the Spanish Speaking community, the main category is the generic group accounting for a large 75% of searches (50 thousand by ‘gluten’).

The second, third, fourth and fifth groups are all around 6%. Of most interest is the specific food group that has seven terms, with the top two being: high gluten flour (3,600) and gluten free oatmeal (2,900).

RUSSIA

Of all the countries analysed so far, Russia (Russian and English speaking) had the highest adjusted gluten free searches per head of population. Although in Russia Google only has about 25% market share with local company Yandax gaining over 60% share, the analysis calculations take this into account. It is this low Google share coupled with very low internet penetration (23%) that causes the combined (Russian and English speaking) search volumes to be adjusted from 604 thousand to 8.3M, and hence a per celiac search per month value of 5.9.

RUSSIA English speaking

Russia’s English speaking gluten free searchers searched around 244 thousand times a month on Google. There was a total of only 101 search terms averaged over the previous year with the profile having a very long low tail. Of the top 50 terms, 14 were generic gluten terms but only accounted for 11% of the volumes. The top two terms were:

Gluten free dessert(s) (9,000); and ‘gluten free meals’ (4.800).

The highest group was actually ‘specific gluten free food’ which accounted for 23% of top 50 searches (54 thousand) and ‘Celiac’ terms also 23% of searches.  Of the ‘specific gluten free food’ terms the top five were:

• Gluten free pizza (14,800)
• Gluten free beer (12,100)
• Gluten free cakes (6,600)
• Corn gluten meal (6,600)
• Gluten free muffins (4,400)

The third highest group ‘celiac’ was dominated by ‘celiacs’ which had 33 thousand of the groups 55 thousand searches.

RUSSIA Russian speaking

The three top groups have similar search share around 25%.

The top group was the GF specific foods which has 8 terms accounting for 26% of top 50 searches, or 93 thousand searches. The top two searches in this group are variations of ‘gluten free food(s)’ taking 66 thousand Searches.

The equal second group was GF specific foods (24%) with the top three searches being gluten free bread (49,500) and ‘gluten free cake’ (22,200), gluten free cookies’ (12,100).

The ‘celiac’ group accounted for 24% of top 50 searches. With only four terms, its 87 thousand searches were dominated by ‘gluten intolerance’ (87,540) and ‘gluten allergy’ (32,500).   

Bruce Scott Dwyer
http://www.articlesbase.com/nutrition-articles/why-are-europes-gluten-free-markets-so-underdeveloped-compared-to-the-us-google-data-from-dec-08-is-used-to-see-what-they-search-for–731365.html

Like if you put the Search in quotes it returns results for that exact phrase or I know theres a way to search for backlinks using brackets. Is there a list of all the little tricks you can use to get better search results?

Effective Googling

Google places the “AND” operator between all search terms entered in basic search box.
It automatically searches for some plural and singular and grammatical variants.

If you enter: news reader
Google searches for: news AND reader OR readers

Google does not search an exact phrase or words, unless the phrase or words is contained within quotes.
eg.: “hollywood musicals” will return all pages where the words "hollywood musicals" appear.

If you need to expand your search with a synonym, use a tilde
e.g.:" ~Ford" – will return all results for Ford motor company

You can search by filetype also (pdf, ppt, xls, doc)
e.g.: “.Net Framework” filetype:pdf – will list out all PDF files regarding .Net

Limit your search results to a particular web site
e.g.: ranten site:google.com – will return all sites on Google where the word ranten appears

You can also search for web sites that link to a particular website
e.g.: “link:bbc.com” – will return all sites that link to bbc.com

You can find sites whic are similar.
e.g.: “related:www.facebook.com” – will return all social networking sites

You can use Google as a dictionary to find the meaning of a word.
e.g.: "define:geography" – will return a page defining the word "geography"

Google is a Calculator as well
e.g.: ((11 * 8501) /sqrt (64)) +545 – (54%5) will return the result
((11 * 8 501) / sqrt(64)) + 545 – (54 % 5) = 12 229.875

Google is Converter too..!
e.g.: 1 USD in GBP – will return the result 1 U.S. dollar = 0.622665006 British pounds
e.g.: 1 pound in kg – will return the result, 1 pound = 0.45359237 kilograms
e.g.: 1 mile in inches – will return the result, 1 mile = 63 360 inches
e.g.: 1c in f – will return the result, 1 degree Celsius = 33.8 degrees Fahrenheit

More Search Operators
allinanchor:
allintext:
allintitle:
allinurl:
cache:
group:
info:
time
weather

Use Specialty Search Functions
Google News: news.google.com
Google Images: images.google.com
Google Blog Search: blogsearch.google.com
Google Finance: finance.google.com
Google Scholar: scholar.google.com
Google Book Search: books.google.com

If you need to track an event, create your own Google News alert – it’s free!

http://www.google.com/alerts

You can choose to monitor latest developments on web pages, blogs, Google news, Google discussion group pages, or all of these sources

Google Scholar

http://scholar.google.com

Covers: law, medicine, social sciences, arts, humanities, business, & finance.
Included items: peer-reviewed papers, theses, book excerpts, abstracts & full-text articles
Sources for items: academic publisher web pages, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities, & other scholarly organizations.

Google Book Search

http://books.google.com/advanced_book_search

Searches full text of indexed books.
If work is in public domain, full contents usually available.
If not, users can view bibliographic info (author, title, publisher) and perhaps some excerpts.
Library partners: UC, Princeton, Stanford, Univ. of Michigan, Univ. of Texas, Oxford, UVA, Univ. of Wisconsin,

Something exciting at last
Localized search
Movie search
Code search

local.google.co.in will search for eg all the Dominos pizza outlets in India

google.co.in/movies
Will return all theatres running area – this case Bombay, India

google.com/codesearch
Will search for public source code

Google hack for finding movies/music
(warning: Not to be tried at office but home…!)
e.g.: intitle:”index.of”(mp3|mp4|avi|dat|mpeg)Deep Purple – will return all pages that contain media from the band Deep Purple

Google Docs
Google Calendar
Google Reader
Google Gear
Google App Engine
Google Sites
Google Sets
Google Trends and so on

PageRank as explained by Google:
Google interprets a link on page A going to page B as a vote — by page A, for page B. Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily.

The multitude of websites present today on the Internet made the competition for the top placement in the natural section of the search engines very fierce. So, we have to admit that it’s quite a big responsibility for Google, Yahoo, and MSN to accurately and fairly establish which 10 websites out of thousands and thousands deserve to be placed on the first page for a certain search query. Let’s imagine a simplified version of the mechanism behind the search engines: think of the Internet as a huge database that contains all websites in it. Each website is labeled as belonging to a certain industry and as responding to certain search queries or keywords, and then graded based on relevance, popularity, user friendliness, technical attributes, etc. When we perform a search query for a certain keyword, the search engines already know which thousands of websites, out of millions, are relevant and should be presented to the visitor. Then, they extract from their database those websites that were labeled as “relevant” for that search query and list them based on the grade they received for that specific keyword. This all happens in a matter of seconds. But how do the search engines establish which websites deserve the top positioning? Each search engine has its own algorithm or mathematical formula for evaluating and grading a website. The closer a website is to meeting the algorithm’s terms, the higher the rankings.

The algorithm behind the “grading” is not made public, but all major search engines provide website design and optimization guidelines for improving rankings that can put us on the right direction. Of course, the intelligent interpretation of these guidelines and the correct implementation of the solutions found is what makes the difference between two SEO companies. Search Engine Optimization is a relatively new industry that has been rapidly embraced by many self proclaimed “SEO experts”, who’ve seen in it one of those rare opportunities to get rich fast. They started to charge huge up front amounts promising the world, but in the end delivering nothing, creating a huge wave of disappointment among business owners. The reason why so many people adventured themselves in the Search Engine Optimization jungle is because everything looks simple from the outside. Truth is that succeeding in this industry, like in any other industry, takes commitment, continuous training, permanent knowledge acquisition, and mastering all means of online communication. Actually it goes beyond that: it requires a deep understanding of the psychology of the online behavior and search patterns, careful analysis of website statistics and analytics, correct implementation of corrective actions, and creative approach of optimization strategies.

The inability of many SEO companies to deliver the promised results, which had caused huge financial loses and disappointment among business owners, created a new trend in the search optimization arena: Performance Based Search Engine Optimization or the “Pay for Results, not for Promises” approach. According to this new, revolutionary approach of the SEO, a business owner who hires the services of an SEO company to achieve top rankings in Google, Yahoo, and MSN will pay only after the promised results are delivered, and NOT before. We witness a shift in power and control between the service provider and the beneficiary of the service. Performance Based Search Engine Optimization empowers those who use the services of an SEO company, and help them be in control of their finances. This new approach of SEO has already started to filter the participants in this industry, by eliminating those companies that do not employ ethical business practices and do not posses the knowledge and expertise to deliver what they promise, and by promoting the real masters of SEO. Performance Based Search Engine Optimization works like a natural selection process, where the weak ones will be automatically self-destructed and eliminated. Nobody can survive in business if revenues do not come in; if results are not delivered, the SEO company will not only be unable to record any income in its books, but will incur huge loses buy investing money in trying to implement an optimization strategy that does not work.

The benefits of the Performance Based SEO are very tangible when it comes to ROI. SEO used to be a huge investment for businesses, but used to bring back in the investors’ pockets very low returns, if any at all. SEO was in many cases a rather huge expenditure than a business investment. The difference between expense and investment stays in the ROI. A business expense can have an indirect influence on the ROI, but it is hardly measurable; this is why, in a financial sense, a business expense is considered a necessary controlled loss (think of office supplies). An investment is supposed to produce an easily measurable profit. In most cases, old SEO tactics used to have a very measurable positive impact on the ROI, but instead of doing so for the business in need of SEO, they were acting solely in the benefit of the SEO Companies. Performance Based Search Engine Optimization on the other hand, where payments are made only after the top results are achieved, became a basically no-risk investment. No results, no payment. It’s as simple as that!

The Internet is a moving target, and trying to control all variables that account for a certain ranking scenario is not a the subject of a hobby. There is no such thing as “Part Time SEO.” The Internet is a market that is open 24 hours, 7 days a week. These should be the business hours of those in charge with exposing and promoting your business on the Internet. Unless an SEO Company can ensure you 24/7 top online presence in the search engines you want for the keywords you want, you should not even consider pursuing such an adventure. It is a huge responsibility to promise top 10 rankings in Google, Yahoo, and MSN, and an SEO company that offers Performance Based Search Engine Optimization with a “Results First-Payment After” approach, should give you the confidence that that they will deliver.

Andrew Torchon
http://www.articlesbase.com/seo-articles/performance-based-search-engine-optimization-seo-company-helps-you-achieve-top-rankings-in-google-yahoo-and-msn-730761.html