Now the second method that I want to talk about is using Google to gauge how much interest there is 1
in your app idea or your startup idea. 2
So a really useful tool is called Google Trends and you can find the link in the text box below this 3
video. 4
And essentially what it does is that it shows you interest over time of a particular search term and 5
you can compare search terms with each other. 6
So this is the way you put in a particular niche that you're interested in targeting, be that Pokemon 7
go or be that travel apps or whatever it is that you are looking to build. 8
You can put in the problem that your idea addresses or the potential positive effect that your idea 9
or product will provide. 10
So basically you just put your search time in here and you could determine whether if you're looking 11
at worldwide data or a particular country and look at the time period. 12
So for example the word Pokemon started really hitting the search engines around summer of 2016 13
when Pokemon go was due to be released. 14
And then you see this huge spike and then you see the interest waning here. 15
So you can look at things like interest over time whether it's growing whether it's waning 16
and to see if you are at a time point where it's optimal to launch. And the other thing is that you can 17
look at interest by region to see which countries you should be targeting with your particular ideas. 18
So it seems like most people who are searching for Pokemon is actually in the Philippines or in Chile 19
or in Singapore and you know that might guide your localization efforts it might mean that you might 20
translate your app et cetera et cetera. 21
The other thing that you can look at is the related topics that people search for when they're looking 22
for pokémon. 23
So people are looking around GPS, they're looking for the sun and moon which is the Pokemon game that we've released 24
recently. 25
And you can look at essentially the search terms around your search term. 26
So for any given topic you can see what is it that people are interested to know about. 27
And then if you look at the search volumes of a particular search term you can estimate how much of an 28
audience or how much interest people will have around the things that you're going to build and you're 29
going to make. 30
So a slightly more refined way of doing this is using the Google Adwords tool called keyword planner. 31
And keyword planner gives you a little bit more information. 32
So this tool is intended for people who are looking to create Google ads. 33
That's essentially you know that top part in Google search which is an advertisement for a web site. 34
But it's also really useful for gauging how much competition your idea has and how much in terms of 35
numbers are people actually searching for these particular search terms. 36
Essentially all you're doing is putting in keywords. 37
Now they can be as long or as short as you want. 38
And the key words are essentially what you expect people to be putting into google search. 39
So essentially when you are in keyword planner you want to go for the Get search volume data and trends and 40
you want to put in your keywords that relate to what it is that your app or your idea does or what problems 41
it solves for the user. 42
These are words that the user would put into Google. 43
So for example say if you were going to sell hair extensions you know you could just put hair extensions 44
and get search volume to see in the US over the last 12 months 45
how many people are searching for hair extensions. 46
You see the average per month you get about 100K to 1 million searches so 47
that's quite a lot and the competition is quite high. 48
That means there's other people who are targeting this keyword to advertise. 49
That means you've got other people who are trying to monetize something relating to this. 50
Now these numbers are only there as a guide but they can help you determine whether if you will have 51
a large enough audience who will want to buy whatever it is that you're making. 52
So if we're making an app that is about tattoo ideas see how much the search volume there is for that. 53
Now there is about 100K to 1 million monthly searches 54
so that's again high. 55
There's a lot of people looking for tattoo ideas but the competition is low. 56
There's not a lot of people targeting it. That's good on one hand but then you have to ask yourself you 57
know why aren't there other people doing this? 58
Is it because they're not able to? 59
Or is it because they can't monetize it? 60
So these are questions that you have to answer about your particular niche or your particular idea. 61
But Google Adwords combined with Google Trends are both really really useful ways of gauging how much 62
interest there could be in your idea or in your product. 63
And one of the key things is looking at trends. 64
So this is the search data for hair extensions over something like 10 years. And you can look at the 65
trends for people searching. 66
So for example if you are out this part of the graph, you know maybe you would feel like yeah it's probably 67
a good idea to start a business that still something to do with hair extensions. 68
But when you're at this part of the graph does it still make sense? 69
You can essentially look at this as a predictor for how much interest there is in your niche or in your 70
product and use it as a guide to determine whether if your idea is a good one that you should pursue 71
or if you should think about some of your other ideas that might be better.