B&W photo of Alex

A picture of Alex at 6 weeks of age. I ran into some problems trying to get the color balance right (main light source is through some shades, and I used a fill flash). This was getting to be very frustrating until I realized that all of the coloring issues went away if I converted the picture to black and white. This is my favorite picture (so far):

Searching for Web-Searches

Apparently you can now do web searches to find out what other people are searching for. This is a very powerful business tool, since it enables you to accurately identify your target segment and create a marketing strategy to reach them. Some of this entry was taken directly from the WSJ article "The New Benefits of Web-Search Queries", Feb 6, 2007 (page B3 in the printed version).

Companies that buy search-related advertising through Google and Yahoo can access the online keyword tools, which enable them to enter specific terms and see estimates of consumer search queries or clicks on related search ads for a given time period. Yahoo has a free online tool accessible to anyone as well at:

http://inventory.overture.com/d /searchinventory/suggestion/

Microsoft has a free prototype service that offers historical monthly search volumes and forecasts for a few months, as well as an age and gender breakdown of those searching:

http://adlab.microsoft.com/ForecastV2/KeywordTrendsWeb.aspx

Wordtracker from Rivergold Associates Ltd., which has a free version of its service that estimates daily query volume for terms and related keywords:

http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com

Some other Web sites let users research keywords, drawing from the Yahoo and Wordtracker data:

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion
http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword

Trellian offers a free version of its service called KeywordDiscovery:

http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html

Other software that companies commonly use to monitor traffic on their Web sites can provide some data on what words consumers are searching for, since it often tracks what search query led them to the site in the first place.

Google offers a free service called Trends that lets users see graphs of relative query volumes over time for any given keywords, and even compare relative query volumes for several keyword phrases. The data on Trends are delayed by one month in some cases, and Google doesn't provide numerical values for the volumes, instead just graphing them in relative terms:

http://trends.google.com

The following is an example of a chart that can be constructed based on research of how people are searching for "sneaker". A store might use this information to determine which brands are the most popular: