CHAPTER 8

LOCATION ANALYTICS

L OCATION ANALYTICS, also known as spatial analysis or geo-

analytics is concerned with mapping, visualizing, and mining the location of
people, data, and other resources. All sectors, including business,
government, nonprofit, and academia, can benefit from location analytics.
The case study “Owl Bus” included in this chapter demonstrates how
location analytics and social media helped Seoul Metropolitan Government
in expanding their bus routes and selecting the “Owl Bus” brand name.
Thanks to the GPS (global positioning systems) embedded in mobile
devices, providing location-based services, products, and information is
becoming a reality. In a recent study, scientists used six million geo-located
Twitter messages to observe the “heartbeat” of New York City (França,
Sayama et al. 2015). Using the dataset, the scientist were able to study and
map the waking, sleeping, commuting, work, and leisure dynamics of the
people living in the city during the weekday and weekends. Such geo-
analytics can be instrumental in better understanding our cities and human
behaviors in space and time.

SOURCES OF LOCATION DATA

Location information can come from a variety of sources, including the
following.
POSTAL ADDRESS
Most business analytics applications rely on address information of their
customers, including city names, locality names, and postal or zip codes.

LATITUDE AND LONGITUDE

In geography, latitude (shown as a horizontal line on a globe) and longitude
(shown as a vertical line on a globe) are used to find exact location on Earth.

GPS-BASED
GPS is a satellite-based navigation system that can be used find exact
location people and resources. Mobile analytics mostly rely on GPS-based
location data. GPS-based location analytics can provide us the most accurate
location for social media users.

IP-BASED
Public IP (Internet protocol) can be used to determine the location of Internet
users. A public IP address is an exclusive numerical address (like a home
address) assigned to a device connected to the Internet. Different regions in
the world are assigned a specific block of public IP addresses; hence, it can
be used to mine approximate geo-location of Internet users.

CATEGORIES OF LOCATION ANALYTICS

Based on its scope, location analytics can be broadly classified into two
categories: 1) business data-driven location analytics, 2) social media data-
driven location analytics.

BUSINESS DATA-DRIVEN LOCATION ANALYTICS

Business data-driven location analytics deals with mapping, visualizing, and
mining location data to reveal patterns, trends, and relationships hidden in
tabular business data. Capitalizing on the data stored in a business database,
location analytics, for example, can map and capture vast among of geo-
specific data to provide information, products, and services based on where
customers are. Using the location of customers, for instance, it is possible to
recommend the nearest convenience store, coffee shop, taxi, or even
probable social relations. Or it can be used for any other business decision,
such as, what is the best potential new site for a business warehouse?

Applications of Business Data-Driven Location Analytics

Business data-driven location analytics has several applications, including
the following.

Powerful Intelligence
Simple maps have been widely used, but they are limited in providing
insightful details. Using sophisticated mapping techniques, such as
clustering, heat mapping, data aggregation (e.g., aggregating data to
regions), and color-coded mapping, can generate powerful business
intelligence (Hecht 2013).

Geo-Enrichment
Simple data maps can be enriched with customer data, including
demographic, consumer spending, lifestyle, and locations (Hecht 2013). For
example, where do my loyal customers spend most of their time?

Collaboration and Sharing

Maps are easy to understand and are good communication and collaboration
tools. Location analytics can map business data for collaboration across
organization. It can also be used for information sharing purposes with
customers. At end of this chapter, a step-by-step tutorial is provided to map
sample tabular business data using Google Fusion Tables. With Google
Fusion Tables, you can map data and display and share the results as maps,
tables, and charts.
SOCIAL MEDIA DATA-DRIVEN LOCATION ANALYTICS
Social media data-driven analytics relies on social media location data to
mine and map location of social media users, content, and data. Social media
location information comes mainly from GPS and IP.

Uses of Social Media-Based Location Analytics

Social media location–based services are becoming a day-to-day reality.
Organizations use location-based services for a variety of purposes,
including the following.

Recommendation Purposes
Organizations can harvest location data to recommend products, services,
and social events to potential customers in real time as they approach certain
localities. For example, Tender recommends potential social relationships
based on the location of users.

Customer Segmentation
Social media location data can be used to segment customers based on their
geographic location. Tweepsmap (https://tweepsmap.com/), for example, can
be used to geo-locate your Twitter followers by country, state, or city.

Advertisement
Location-based advertisement allows targeted marketing and promotion
campaign mostly delivered through mobile devices to reach specific target
audiences.

Information Request
Based on their current location, customers can request a product, service, or
resource (e.g., the nearest coffee shop, restaurant, or parking lot).
Alerts
Location data can be used to send and receive alerts and notifications, such
as sales and promotion alerts traffic congestion alerts, speed limit warnings,
and storm warnings.

Search and Rescue

Location data is vital in search and rescue operations. For example, Agos a
geo-tagging and reporting platform that enables communities deal with
climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction.

Navigation
Mobile- and GPS-based navigation services and apps assist us in finding
addresses. BE-ON-ROAD, for instance, is a free offline turn-by-turn GPS
navigation app for Android devices.

LOCATION ANALYTICS AND PRIVACY CONCERNS

While location-based services bring ease, convenience, and safety to
customers and value to business, they also raise serious privacy issues
related to collection, retention, use, and disclosure of location information
(Minch 2004). Tracking, mining, and storing location information can
endanger some fundamental human rights, such as freedom of movement
and freedom from being observed. Minch (2004) raised several issues
arising from location-based services, including the following.

Should users of location-enabled devices be informed when location

tracking is in use?
Should users of location-enabled devices be permitted to control the
storage of location information?
Should location information as stored be personally identifiable, or
should the user have the option to preserve degrees of anonymity?
What legal protection should a person’s historical location information
have against unreasonable search and seizure?
To what extent should users of location-based services be allowed to
choose their own level of identifiability/anonymity?
 What level of disclosure control should be dictated by government
regulation? By the affected individual customers, users, etc.? By other
parties?
What governmental legislation and regulation is appropriate to assure
citizens’ rights of privacy in an era of location-aware mobile devices?

LOCATION ANALYTICS TOOLS

Google Fusion Tables: Google Fusion Tables is a web service to geo-tag,
store, share, query, and visualize tabular business data overlaid on Google
Maps. This chapter provides a detailed tutorial on Google Fusion Tables.
Agos: Agos is a geo-tagging and reporting platform that helps
communities deal with climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction:
http://agos.rappler.com/#
Tweepsmap: Tweepsmap (https://tweepsmap.com/) maps your Twitter
followers by country, state, or city.
Trendsmap: Trendsmap (http://trendsmap.com/) is real-time tool that
maps the latest trends from Twitter, anywhere in the world.
Followerwonk: This tool helps you perform basic Twitter analytics,
such as, who are your followers? Where are they located? When do they
tweet? The tool can be accessed via http://followerwonk.com/
Esri: Esri’s GIS (geographic information systems) is software to map,
visualize, question, analyze, and interpret data to understand relationships,
patterns, and trends (http://www.esri.com/).

CASE STUDY: THE “OWL BUS”

BACKGROUND
The Seoul Night Bus, also known as the “Owl Bus,” is the brand name of the
Seoul (South Korea) city’s intracity buses that run nine routes exclusively
from midnight to 5:00 a.m. Like an owl, animated in the dark with its
yellow-glowing eyes, the “Owl Bus” was born to make Seoul’s public
transportation service ceaseless, carrying the city’s late night commuters. As
the service is the first of its kind in Korea, policymakers struggled to shape
action plans in detail. Particularly, the biggest task was to address issues
such as selection of the routes, ensuring efficient operation and passengers’
safety and convenience. Location analytics and social media help Seoul
Metropolitan Government (SMG) to realize the “Owl Bus” project and
overcome these challenges.

THE PROBLEM
Since the subway line No. 1 opened in 1974 through to the transformation
reform carried out in 2004, the Seoul Metropolitan SMG has steadily
introduced measures to ensure greater convenience and better mobility of the
citizens. However, students and workers such as sanitary workers or small
business owners, who return home late night, found it hard to benefit from
the preexisting systems. Most of them suffer from the poor working
conditions and low salaries, yet they still had to pay the late-night extra
charge when taking taxis to return home.
Second issue was the growing inconvenience due to late-night taxis”
refusal of passengers and illegal operation. During late night and dawn
hours, there are far less available taxis than people who are trying to hail a
cab. Thus, illegal operations are prevalent by taxi drivers demanding extra
fares, causing serious inconvenience to citizens. Additionally, there are
practical limitations in controlling such irregularities. Firstly, there is a
shortage of police officers responsible for preventing such violations, and
even if the police catch an offender red-handed, it is difficult to obtain
evidence to prove the driver’s act of refusing passengers or demanding
illegal excess fares.
Third issue was related to the public-private consensus on the need for
new means of transportation to support urban dwellers” economic activities.
Seoul, transformed into a global city within just 50 years, is emerging as a
prime location of the global economy. As the city” industrial, economic and
cultural activities expand in size and scope, the citizens reached a consensus
on the need for a bus service that operates from midnight to dawn. It was
also considered that advanced nations such as Germany and the U.K. have
already run such services to promote the safety of the citizens and their
rights to mobility.
Private bus companies” selective operation on profitable routes was a
long-running concern for SMG. Thus, it shifted from private to quasi-public
bus operation system. In the new system, Seoul manages the bus routes and
revenues while the private companies operate buses.

THE SOLUTION
Test Operation of Night Bus at the Request of the Citizens: Since 2012,
the SMG has operated the 120 Dasan Call Center and the official blog to
better listen to the voices of the citizens, and developed various policy
measures based on the information collected through these channels. Along
the way, an opinion was received that the late night taxi service is not only
difficult to use but also imposes heavy financial burdens on users. An on-site
survey conducted for about six months from October 2012 found it
necessary to operate a late-night bus service. As a result, starting from April
19, 2013, the city government began operating two pilot routes exclusively
for an after-midnight service.
Role of location analytics and social media: Social media and
location analytics played a very important role in expanding the bus routes
and selection of “Owl Bus” brand name. For three months following the
launch of the test operation, the service was extremely well-received by
220,000 people, making it justifiable to raise the number of service routes.
The seven new lines were determined by taking into consideration the heavy
concentration of people on the move during late night hours. During the
initial stages of mapping out how to operate the Seoul Night Bus, the issue
of selecting bus routes emerged. The municipal government color-coded
regions by call volume based on the location data provided by a private
communication service provider, KT. Then, it analyzed the number of
passengers who get on and off at each bus stop in the heavy-call volume
regions and connected the dots to lead to the most pertinent routes. The data
was used to construct a radial-shape network linking outer districts of the
city with the hub areas such as Jongno and Gwanghwamun.
With news regarding the Late Bus spreading over SNS channels,
citizens voluntarily suggested to name the late-night bus. Thus, the city
government invited public ideas for the naming of the service and, as a
result, the brand name “Owl Bus” and “N (Late Night),” and the character
that portrays an owl operating a bus were selected. These symbols have been
used to mark bus stop signs, bus route map and numbers and distinguish the
late-night buses from ordinary ones. With the letter “N” in the bus number,
the service began its full operation on September 16, 2014.

RESULTS
Real-time operation information: The service provides citizens with real-
time operation information. Anyone who wants to take the “Owl Bus” can
check the arrival time and location of the bus stop in advance through the
website or smartphone apps. Meantime, given that the service operates late
night, safety measures were critical to protect citizens. Besides the protective
partition and speeding prevention device, it was made mandatory to inspect
the vehicle before driving. The drivers with proven qualifications are also
well remunerated so that they do not have to take on other vocational
activities during the daytime hours and can fully concentrate during night
time driving.
Safe and Affordable Means of Transportation for Citizens: The
numbers of “Owl Bus” passengers are on the constant rise. A total of
1,735,000 people have taken the buses from September 2009 to June 2013,
making the daily average passengers stand at around 7,000. As for economic
aspects, passengers are expected to save approximately KRW 6,000 as the
“Owl Bus” charges KRW 1,850 per trip while the average taxi fare in the
same timeframe costs KRW 8,000. Given that the most of the passengers are
students, self-employed small business owners or workers, the service is
expected to help stabilize their household finances.
Meantime, most passengers are concentrated in the timeframe from
midnight to 03:00, when students and workers return home completing their
after-school self-study and night duties. As the unfrequented time tends to
leave them more vulnerable, the “Owl Bus” is considered to help them move
more safely. Notably, the “Safe returning-home service” provided in
cooperation with the nearby police stations reinforce the safety.
Income redistribution for the economically disadvantaged: Before
the operation of the “Owl Bus,” one had to pay up to tens of thousands of
won to move from the city center to a residential district outside the city.
However, they now can complete their journey with just 1,850 won. As the
savings will lead to higher disposable incomes, income redistribution effects
are expected, too. As of 2013, the SMG estimates nearly KRW 14.1 billion
worth of economic benefits have been redistributed.
 Distribution of the manual for other local governments to
benchmark: As residents of other cities express their interest in the “Owl
Bus,” through SNS channels, local governments and research institutes have
inquired about the process in the run-up to the introduction and requested
lectures on the “Owl Bus.” With many metropolitan governments expressing
their interest, the Busan Metropolitan Government has already begun
operating the late night service by extending the operation hours of existing
intracity buses and other cities such as Ulsan and Daejun consider
introducing it, too.

RESOURCES
Budget: To finance the operation of the “Owl Bus,” budget provision was
needed to pay for the labor costs and the installation of safety facilities such
as protective walls for drivers and a speeding prevention system. However,
these expenses were covered by the joint management funds for the shift
from private to quasi-public bus operation. Consequently, additional costs
were not incurred.
Technology: Information systems connected inside the vehicles such
as the Bus Management System, the Bus Information Unit and Bus
Information Tool enable comprehensive control of the bus operations, and
efficient adjustment of intervals while providing users and drivers with real
time operation information.
Human resources: The “Owl Bus was introduced without incurring
additional costs, and increased operation revenues too. The allocated
resources are 45 vehicles and a total of 54 workers; 36 for driving and 18 for
management.
Source: Bus Policy Department, the Seoul Metropolitan Government,
South Korea.

TUTORIAL: MAPPING WITH GOOGLE FUSION TABLES

Google Fusion Tables is a web service to store, share, query, and visualize
tabular business data overlaid on Google Maps. Tabular data can be
visualized and shared in a variety of ways, including charts, maps, network
graphs, or custom layout. California Sate, for example, shares government
datasets using Fusion Tables (http://data.ca.gov/category/by-data-
format/fusion-tables/) where the data can be viewed, filtered, and
downloaded by citizens.
The data formats supported by Fusion Tables include spreadsheets,
CSV files, and Keyhole Markup Language (KML, a file format used to
display and map geographic data). Google also provides the Fusion Tables
API (https://developers.google.com/fusiontables/) for managing data
programmatically and an example library of Fusion Tables:
https://sites.google.com/site/fusiontablestalks/stories.
In this tutorial, we will learn how to configure Fusion Tables to map
and share your data online.

GETTING STARTED WITH FUSION TABLES

Step 1: Go to https://www.google.com/fusiontables/ and click on the “Create
a Fusion Table” button. For this exercise, we will use Victoria, Australia’s
location of police stations data downloaded from
http://data.gov.au/dataset/police-station-locations in the KML format (the
data file and up-to-date tutorial is also available on the book companion
website).
Step 2: Next, you will be asked to upload your data into the Fusion
Table. To do so, you have four options:

1. Upload from your computer

2. Upload from Google Spreadsheets
3. Create an empty table (for manipulating data later)
4. Search other online publically available data

In this tutorial, we choose the “from this computer” and click “Browse
File” to upload the data. Locate the data you want to open and click the
“Next” button.
Step 3: Next, choose the format (i.e., comma separated, tab, colon, or
other type) of data being uploaded (in this case KML). Leave the other
options on their default settings and click the “Next” button.
Step 4: After the data is loaded, make sure that the correct row is
selected for the column names (which is normally row 1) and click “Next.”
 Step 5: Once the data is imported, provide the following details and
click “Finish.”
Table—Provide a meaningful table name.
Allow export—If you check this, other users will be able to export your
data into a CSV file.
Attribute data to—Here you can write a message that will be displayed
when people view or use your data.
Attribution page link—Provide the attribution page URL or link, if any.
Description—Provide a meaningful description here that may help you
remember what the data is about.
Step 6: Now your data is uploaded into the Fusion Table and you are
ready to process, visualize, and share it.
Step 7: Fusion Tables auto-detect location data and display a tab called
“Map of <location column name>.” In this case, the “Map” tab is titled
“Map of geometry.” Click on “Map of geometry” to see a map of the police
stations (Screenshot 18).

Screenshot 18. Map of police stations

 If the Fusion Table does not automatically detect location information,
then you need to configure it manually through the following steps:

1. Click on the “Rows” tab and find the column name that has the location
data and click on the downward pointing arrow.
2. Next, click on “Change.”
3. On the page that opens up, choose “Location” for the type and then
click on the “Save” button.

Step 8: Next, double-click on a red place-mark to view more

information about a police station.

Step 9: Once you’ve created a map, you can customize different

aspects of it, including creating and customizing charts, creating custom
cards, changing marker styles, and apply filters to your data.
Changing marker styles—To change the marker style (the red dots),
use the following steps.

➢ Make sure that you are on the “Map” tab. Click “Tools→Change
map→Change feature styles.”
➢ Click on the “Marker” icon in the left panel and “Fixed” in the
right panel.
➢ Choose a different marker style from the dropdown menu and
click “Save.”
➢ You can also assign different marker icons to different types of
variables by using the “Bucket” option. For example, police
stations in different regions can be marked with different icons.

Filtering data—Filters are variables from your table/data that will be

used to filter out data for display. To apply filters to your data, use the
following steps.

➢ Make sure that you are on the “Map” tab. Click on the “Filters”
button available at the left upper side of the map.
 ➢ Select a filter that you want to apply from the dropdown list (e.g.,
we chose “Region”).

After applying the filter, you will be offered all the distinct values for
regions (in this case, four regions are displayed). We choose to display
police stations from only one region (i.e., Northern Metro). Now only data
about police stations from Northern Metro is displayed.
Customize the info window—the default information window that
appears when you click on a red dot only uses the first ten columns from the
data table, but you can customize which data appears and how it is
displayed.

➢ Make sure that you are on the “Map” tab. Click on the
“Tools→Change map,” then click the “Change info window”
button.
➢ Click on the checkboxes to add or remove information from the
automatic info window template.
➢ You can also customize the overall style and content of the info
window template by clicking the “Custom” tab. Once done, click
on the “Save” button.

Adding charts—Fusion Tables lets you add charts to your data so that
you compare and contrast multiple values at a glance.
➢ To add a chart, click on the red plus (+) sign and then click on
“Add Chart” from the dropdown menu.
➢ Once a chart is added, you can choose different variables (e.g.,
continuous or categorical) to the chart depending on the type of
chart you selected (e.g., pie chart, bar graph, line chart, or
network chart). A chart type can be changed from the left panel.
➢ Once you selected the right type of chart, click on the “Done”
button in the upper right-hand corner (Screenshot 19).
 Screenshot 19. Configuring charts

Sharing your data—One of the main reasons you are using Fusion
Tables is to make your data available for other to see and download. To share
your map, use the following steps.

➢ Make sure that you are on the “Map” tab. Click on the “Tools”
menu and then click on “Publish.”
➢ You can either share it with a limited number of people through e-
mail, or you can make it available over the Internet for everyone
to see. In this exercise, we will make it available to the public.
➢ Click on the “Change” option under “Who has access.” A new
window will appear. Select the “public on the web” option and
then click “Save.”
➢ Next, you will be provided with a link and an HTML code for
sharing your data. Copy it and click “Done.” The code and the
link can be embedded into your blog, website, or social media
platforms. You can always get the link and code by clicking
“Tools” and then “Publish.”
➢ In a similar way, the charts you have created can be shared. Note
that to share a chart, you must be at the “Chart” tab and then click
“Tools→Publish.” You will be provided with a code and link to
share.
 Review Questions

1. Define location analytics.

2. Explain the two main categories of location analytics.
3. What are the sources of location data.
4. What are the main applications of business data-driven location
analytics?
5. What are the main applications of social media data-driven location
analytics?
6. Discuss privacy concerns related to location analytics.
 CHAPTER 9

SEARCH ENGINES ANALYTICS

S EARCH ENGINES are the gateways to social media and help users
search for and find information. To be more precise, a search engine is an
Internet service or software designed to search information on the web that
corresponds to a request (e.g., keywords) specified by the user. Considering
that there are billions of websites over the web, search engines play a crucial
role in helping us find the right information in a limited amount of time.
Before shifting our focus to search engines analytics, let’s understand
different types of search engines.

TYPES OF SEARCH ENGINES

Based on the mechanisms they operate, search engine can be divided into
three types: 1) Crawler-based, 2) Directories, and 3) Metasearch engines.

CRAWLER-BASED
As the name suggests, crawler-based search engines create their databases or
lists automatically, without any human intervention. Examples of crawler-
based search engine are Google.com and Bing.com. Crawler-based search
engines are widely used to find and access content over the Internet. They
operate in three steps: 1) web crawling, 2) indexing, and 3) searching.
Web crawling—Search engines start by collecting and storing
information about web pages. This mechanism is termed web crawling. A
web crawler (also known as web spider or bot) is a computer program or
software specifically designed to collect and store data about websites for
indexing.
Indexing—Indexing helps classify a website correctly for searching
purposes. The data crawled or extracted is then indexed and stored in a
database for quick access. Every search engine may follow different
techniques for indexing web page data. Common indexing techniques
include storing meta tags (which are used in the header of a web page and
provide descriptions of the website) and keywords related to a website.
Searching—Searching is the final step in search engine operations.
When a user requests specific information by entering keywords in a search
engine, the search engine queries the index and provides a list of the most
relevant web pages by matching it with the indexed keywords. However, it
may not be that simple; search engines use a variety of factors to rank and
provide a list of matching websites.
A takeaway here is that in order to achieve good search results an
organization must place keywords in section titles, images, and in the
general content of its website. A keyword density of 5–8 percent (i.e., five to
eight keywords per one hundred words) is an optimal number. Having
important keywords embedded in a website enables a search engine robot to
evaluate the website as being the most suitable site for the searched word.
However, if one repeatedly uses the same keywords or definitions in page
content, it may be perceived by a robot to be spamming (Yalçin and Köse
2010). Research has shown that the position of key words in a website, as
well as their duplication, layout, and combination, impact web page
visibility in a search engine, (Zhang and Dimitroff 2005) which can be
improved by increasing the frequency of keywords in the title, the full text,
and in both the title and full-text. In conjunction with key words, the overall
design of a website is an important factor that must be taken into
consideration when discussing search engine optimization. For example,
flash animations, while aesthetically appealing, can negatively impact the
SEO evaluation results because they cannot be indexed as easily by bots as
more simply structured HTML content (Yalçin and Köse 2010). For a
corporation to better understand its Internet presence, its website statistics
should also be checked on a regular basis so as to understand both how users
access and utilize the site and also what impact site changes may have on
these behaviors.
DIRECTORIES
The listings in directories are manually compiled and created by human
editors. People who want to be listed in a directory submit an address, title,
and brief description of their website, which is then reviewed by the editor
and included in it. Some good examples of human-created directories are
Yahoo Directory, Open Directory, and LookSmart.

METASEARCH ENGINES
Metasearch engines compiles and display results from other search engines.
When a user enters a query, the metasearch engine submits the query to
several individual search engines, and results returned from all the search
engines are integrated, ranked, and displayed to the user. Examples of meta–
search engines include Metacrawler, Mamma, and Dogpile. By integrating
results from several search engines, metasearch engines are capable of
handling large amounts of data and can help us save time by focusing on one
search engine.
Based on their scope, search engines can be divided into two types: 1)
local and 2) global.

LOCAL SEARCH ENGINES

A search engine is local in the sense that it is embedded within a website and
only indexes and searches the content of that website. Amazon’s
CloudSearch or any other search engine embedded within a website is an
example of local search engine.

GLOBAL SEARCH ENGINES

Global search engines are used to search for content on the web. Google.com
and Bing. com are examples of global search engines. However, note that
global search engines can be localized. Google search, for example, can also
embed within your website to help users find information on your website.

SEARCH ENGINE ANALYTICS

Generally, when we talk about search engine analytics, we mean two
things,:1) search engine optimization and 2) search engine trend analysis.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

Search engine optimization (SEO) are the techniques used to improve a
website’s ranking in a search engine result page (SERP) (Pan 2015). A
SERP is the list of the results returned by a search engine in response to a
user’s query. SERPs generally have two types of results: organic and
nonorganic search results. Organic results appear mainly because of their
relevance to the user’s query. Nonorganic search results include paid
advertisements. A study tested the effect of sponsored ad ranks on the click-
through and conversion rates for an online retailer and found that top
positions usually had higher click through rates, but not necessarily higher
conversion rates (Agarwal, Hosanagar et al. 2011).
Social media marketers strive to develop search engine strategies to
make their websites appear at the top of search results. It is important for
their websites to appear at top (e.g., in the top ten) in the SERP, as users pay
closer attention to the top results on search engines (Pan, Hembrooke et al.
2007). The ranking becomes more crucial when the website is commercial
by nature; that is, selling products or services. High rankings on SERPs can
mean more Internet traffic to a website, which in some cases converts to
more paying clients and higher return on investment (Weideman 2009).
For social media marketers, it is important to understand the
mechanism behind the SERP ranking. There may be variety of factors search
engines take into account to rank websites, such as keywords and relevance.
However, the most important factor that determines SERP ranking is the
PageRank. PageRank is a mechanism (or an algorithm, to be more precise)
used by Google search engines to rank websites’ SERPs. The websites that
rank higher are displayed on the top of the search results page. Google’s
PageRank algorithm predominantly relies on the quality of incoming
hyperlinks (or in-links) to rank websites. A website, for example, with in-
links from a famous websites (e.g., cnn.com) will appear on the top of the
SERP if compared with a website with no quality in-links or many low-
quality in-links. To understand the in-link quality and number argument,
consider Figure 12, where nodes represents web pages and lines represent in-
links (arrowhead pointing to a page) and out-links (arrowhead pointing away
from a page). The PageRank algorithm will place page B higher on the
SERP, even though there are fewer in-links to B when compared to D. The
reason for this ranking is that in-links to website B are from an important
website; that is, A. Bottom line, your objective is to increase the number of
quality in-links to your website.

Figure 12. PageRank algorithm ranking example

By using, for example, Open SEO Stats (an extension for Google
Chrome available at: http://pagerank.chromefans.org/), users can be
determine the ranking of a website based on Google PageRank. Google
PageRank uses a scale of 0 to 10, indicating the importance that the Google
search engine allocates to the page. In addition to page ranking, Open SEO
Stats also provides information about website traffic, hyperlink status, and
speed of the page, among other things.
SEARCH TREND ANALYTICS
Search engine trends analytics deals with analyzing and understanding the
keywords people use in a search engine. Search engine data are gateways
into the minds of customers. Through search engines, customers search for
what they want, thus search trend analysis can provide value information to
the social marketers.
When it comes to trends analytics, Google Trends
(http://www.google.com/trends/) is one of the most convenient and
comprehensive search engine trend analysis tools. Google trends use
massive amounts of search engine data to analyze the world’s interests and
predict trends. In the financial sector, Google Trends data, for example, has
been used to detect “early warning signs” of stock market moves (Preis,
Moat et al. 2013). In the health sector, Google Trends data has helped
determine world flu epidemics (Ginsberg, Mohebbi et al. 2009). Engineers at
Google.org, for instance, using Google Trends data, found a strong
correlation among the searches for flu-related topics and the numbers of
actual flu cases circulating in different countries and regions around the
world (Ginsberg, Mohebbi et al. 2009).
In this chapter, we use Google Trends for search engine analytics. From
a business perspective, Google Trends can help also answer a variety of
questions, including the following.

How people search for your brand?

When does interest spike in your products or services?
Which keywords drive more traffic?
Which regions are interested in your brand?
What are trending topics over the Internet?
How are your competitors performing?

SEARCH ENGINE ANALYTICS TOOLS

Google Trends: Google Trends (http://trends.google.com/) is a search
engine analytics tool. This chapter includes a detailed tutorial on Google
Trends.
Canopy: Canopy is multimedia analytics tool designed to support deep
investigation of large multimedia collections, such as images, videos, and
documents. More information on Canopy is available here:
http://www.vacommunity.org/article32
Google Alerts: Google Alerts (https://www.google.com/alerts) is a
content detection and notification service that automatically notifies users
when new content over the Internet (e.g., social media, web, blogs, video
and/or discussion groups) matches a set of search terms based on user
queries. Users are alerted through e-mail. Find out about how to use Google
Alerts.
Icerocket: Icerocket (http://www.icerocket.com/) specializes in blog
searches and also captures activity on Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr.

Social Mention: Social Mention (http://socialmention.com/) is similar to

Google Alerts, but it only focuses on social media sites, and you can choose
to focus on particular areas, such as blogs. With Social Mention you can
monitor for the appearance of particular keywords and it will give you
information on related users, hashtags, and more.
TweetBeep: TweetBeep (http://tweetbeep.com/) is like Google Alerts
for Twitter. Choose some keywords and receive daily search results via e-
mail.

TUTORIAL: SEARCH ENGINE ANALYTICS WITH GOOGLE

TRENDS
Google Trends uses percentages to analyze trend results. For example, if
someone searches for the term analytics in Australia in June of 2015, Google
Trends analyzes and displays the percentage of all searches for the keyword
analytics in June in Australia.

TYPES OF ANALYTICS PROVIDED BY GOOGLE TRENDS

In its current form, Google Trends provides six types of analytics available
at the dropdown box at the left upper corner. They are as follows.

✓ Year in Search
✓ Trending Searches
✓ Trending on YouTube
 ✓ Top Charts
✓ Explore
✓ Subscription

Among them, the “Explore” option is the most important from the
search engine analytics perspective and we will look it in detail in this
chapter. But, first let’s briefly discuss the other analytic reports.

YEAR IN SEARCH
Year in Search is a short commercial video clip (with accompanying details
that can be further explored) that summarizes the world’s most popular
searches in a particular year. Currently, a year in search video is available for
the year 2014.

TRENDING SEARCHES
Trending Searches provides a list of top-ten searches on a daily basis for a
specific country. The search results for particular data are updated regularly.

TRENDING ON YOUTUBE
Like Trending Searches, Trending on YouTube provides a list of top-ten
videos on a daily basis for a specific country. The search results for
particular data are updated regularly.

TOP CHARTS
Top Charts displays a list of trending real-world people, places, and things
ranked in order of search interest in a particular year. With Top Charts, for
example, one can see a list of the top-ten most searched athletes, consumer
electronics, YouTube videos, topics, and global news, among other things.
Top Charts depends on Knowledge Graph technology to provide the
rankings (Knowledge Graph is Google’s knowledge base that understands
facts about real-world things (e.g., people, places and things) and their
connections. Knowledge Graph is used to enhance users’ search experiences
by providing them structured and detailed information about the topic they
are searching for. More information on Knowledge Graph can be found here:
http://www.google.co.kr/insidesearch/features/search/knowledge.html). The
charts can be customized to show either global search trends or search trends
in a particular country. Historical search trends going back to the year 2001
are available.

EXPLORE
The Explore option is a very important resource in search engine analytics.
The Explore option lets you analyze search engine trends related one or
more search terms across time and location. Recall some of the questions we
mentioned earlier, such as, “How do people search for your brand?” “When
does interest spike in your products or services?” “Which keywords drive
more traffic?” “Which regions are interested in your brand?” The Explore
option can help you answer these questions. Here is how to start using the
Explore option.
Step 1: Open Google Trends: http://www.google.com/trends/.
Step 2: Click on the “Trends” option in the upper left-hand corner.
Next, from the dropdown menu, select “Explore.”
Step 3: Next, click on “Add Terms” to enter the search terms for what
you want to analyze. Repeat this process until you have entered all the
desired terms. In this case, we entered three terms: “iPhone 4,” “Galaxy S4,”
and “LG Optimus.” The results are grouped into three categories: 1) interests
over time, 2) regional interests, and 3) related searches. Below, we discuss
each of the categories in detail.

INTERESTS OVER TIME

Interests over time (in terms of number of searches) are displayed in the
form of a graph below the terms showing their popularity over time
(Screenshot 22). The numbers on the graph reflect how many searches have
been done for the terms, relative to the total number of searches done on
Google over time. Note that the numbers represent search volume relative to
the highest point on the graph, which is always 100. The data on the search
volume is normalized and presented on a scale from 0–100, thus it does not
represent absolute search volume numbers.
 You can examine different points on the graph by hovering your mouse
over them. The graph also display news headlines (if available) related to the
terms. The news headlines are indicated by capital letters displayed over the
lines and correspond to the year of the news. By hovering your cursor over
the letters, you will be able to see the detailed news. You can also see the
forecasted results by checking the “Forecast” checkbox in the upper right-
hand corner of the graph (forecasts are always available). You can also
notice bars appearing next to the chart. The bar height represents the average
of all data points on the graph for that search term.
From the graph it is clear that interest in smartphones corresponds to
their launch dates, and that interest is much stronger in the first couple of
months and then declines.

Screenshot 20. Interest in iPhone 4, Galaxy S4, and LG Optimus over time

REGIONAL INTERESTS
The “Regional Interests” section shows interest in the search terms with
respect to geography (Screenshot 20). Note that for each search term,
regional interest is shown in a separate window. In the screenshot below, we
are looking at the regional interest in the “iPhone 4” term. You can choose
the “Galaxy S4” term by clicking over it. You can also switch between
region and city view by the clicking the appropriate option in the top right-
hand corner. From the results it is clear that top cities interested in the
iPhone 4 are Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, Bangkok, London, Singapore, and
Manila.

Screenshot 21. Regional interest in iPhone 4s

However, interest in the Galaxy S4 is coming from Jakarta, Istanbul,

Sydney, Bucharest, Berlin, Munich, and Vienna (Screenshot 21). You can
see the detailed regional search volume by clicking on a region of interest.
 Screenshot 22. Regional interest in Galaxy S4

RELATED SEARCHES
The “Related Searches” section (available near the bottom of the page)
shows the popular search terms similar to your search terms. Using this
function, for example, you can find which topics will potentially drive more
traffic, “smartphone” or “Galaxy S4”? Knowing trending topics related to
our products/services can help us optimize a campaign.
Now that you understood the basic of Google Trends, let’s focus on
how to use the research function more effectively.

UNDERSTANDING THE RESEARCH FUNCTION

Using Search Operators

You can use search operators to filter the types of results that you see in
Trends. Use the Table 3 to learn about executing your search correctly.

Table 3. Executing your research correctly

Search Terms The Results Displayed
Social media analytics Results can include searches
containing the terms “social,”
“media,” and “analytics” in any order.
“Social media analytics” Results will only include the exact
search terms included inside of the
quotation marks.
social + analytics Results can include searches
containing the words “social” OR
“analytics.”
social – analytics Results will include searches
containing the word “social,” but will
exclude searches containing the word
“analytics.”

Note that Google Trends searches ignore special characters (such as

apostrophes, single quotes, and parentheses). Similarly, misspelled words
and spelling variations are considered as separate words. For example, the
term “analytic” and “analytics” will be considered two separate words.

Grouping Search Terms

Overall, you can search up to five groupings at one time, with up to twenty-
five search terms in each grouping. Consider the following example.

✓ iPhone 2 + Galaxy S2 + LG G (Grouping 1)

✓ iPhone 3 + Galaxy S3 + LG Optimus F3 (Grouping 2)
✓ iPhone 4 + Galaxy S4 (Grouping 3)
✓ iPhone 5 + Galaxy S5 + LG Optimus F6 (Grouping 4)
✓ iPhone 6+ Galaxy S6 (Grouping 5)

Customizing the Search

From the dropdown menu available at the top of the page, search results can
be customized with respect to countries, years, categories (such as business
or games), and types of web resources to focus on (such as web search,
image search, news search, Google shopping, and YouTube search). You can
also select custom data from the date dropdown menu by clicking on the
“Select Data” option. For example, in the example above, we restricted our
search to January 2010–April 2015. Note that currently, trend data is only
available from 2004 onward.

Review Questions

1. What is the function of a search engine?

2. Explain different types of search engines.
3. Differentiate between local and global search engines.
4. What is search engine analytics?
5. Explain the two main categories of search engine analytics.
6. What is the purpose of search engine optimization?
7. What is the purpose of search engine trend analysis?