Google Tools You Didn’t Know About

After attending an AdWords Boot Camp at the Google Campus in Austin, Texas a few weeks back, I gained a better look into some of Google’s most useful tools and wanted to take this opportunity to share them with our readers.

Learn how people around the world use the internet + make purchase decisions

Google’s Consumer Barometer is sure to be super helpful for anyone seeking market-specific research on how people use and have used the internet to shop, communicate, and watch. It is basically a storehouse of Google survey data to internet users compiled over time and easily accessible and exportable via custom charts and graphs. There are four main sections – Graph Builder, Trended Data, Audience Stories, and Curated Insights.

Source: Consumer Behavior UK

Graph Builder allows you to select specific survey questions from the most recent results, view their responses based on a variety of filters, and export the resulting graphs to a png or CSV format. Questions are separated into three different themes: The Online & Multiscreen World, The Smart Shopper, and The Smart Viewer.

Trended Data is a similar idea to Graph Builder; however, it allows viewing of survey responses to specific questions over time and with fewer filtering capabilities (just country, and gender or age range). The data is displayed in pretty, premade graphs that you can also export as a png or CSV.

Audience Stories give more in-depth insight into high-value audience segments (Brand Advocates, Digital Moms, How-To Video Users, and The Millenials). Learn about their online behavior, purchase patterns, and how to best reach them through curated data and observations from Google.

Curated Insights brings all of the above together, showing curated data and graphs to give color to different audience segments based on country. You can even open each graph in graph builder to dig further into the survey responses and filter them to get even more tailored data.

Find the best international markets for your business

Google’s Market Finder opens with a nifty onboarding tool that allows you to gauge the international market potential of your business by ranking top markets based on their category monthly search volume, recommended AdWords bid, Ease of doing business index ranking, and household net disposable income. You can either input your website URL to be scraped for product categories offered, or select up to five product categories manually.

Source: Google’s Market Finder Instructions

After that initial information dump, which is helpful in its own right, you are given the option to get more tailored insights into international markets by providing your name, answering whether you sell physical goods or not, and agreeing to have your information used in accordance with Google’s privacy policy. After doing so, you can dig into each of the suggested markets and learn more about their population’s demographic makeup, internet usage, and purchase behavior.

Explore relative search patterns

Google Correlate began as a project designed to help predict flu trends in a more real-time way than traditional methods. Scientists would use real-world influenza data as input to find out which search queries were best correlated with flu activity – and found that search query activity served as a great indicator of flu activity!

Source: Google Correlate Flu Activity

Today, Google Correlate is often described as the inverse of Google Trends. Where in Google Trends you can input a query or topic, and see the “Interest Over Time” for whatever your input was; with Google Correlate you can input a query (or even your own data series about something else entirely, like the scientists, originally did with their flu data) and see queries that follow a similar pattern. These output queries aren’t necessarily related to your original input  (remember correlation is not the same as causation), but experience similar patterns over time.

Connect a variety of data sources + create dynamic, visually completing reports/dashboards

Google Data Studio (currently in beta) is a data visualization and reporting tool that makes creating custom dashboards using multiple data sources easier than ever. With new features rolling out all the time, Data Studio has become a lot more powerful with the ability to connect more than just Google Analytics.

Source: Google Data Studio AdWords Template

For free users can connect almost any Google data source (Google Analytics, Google AdWords, DCM, BigQuery, etc.), any data input into a Google Sheets file, or even directly upload their own data file to use with Google Data Studio. You don’t even need a Google account to view Data Studio reports

Measure the impact of each marketing channel on the path to purchase

Announced just last year at Google Marketing Next, Google Attribution will be a free tool that can be used with Google Analytics, DoubleClick or AdWords with the aim of assigning credit to the different pieces of a user’s true path to conversion. Simply put, giving credit where it’s due.

Source: Google Attribution Features Preview

The free version of the tool is currently only available to a few hundred advertisers with availability for more set to roll out this year. There is a paid Attribution 360 offering through Analytics 360 Suite, which is also in beta.

Coming hot off the heels of an industry-wide push to move away from last-click attribution, Google Attribution will be the missing piece that will help link all of Google’s advertising platforms and help prove the value of traditionally more upper and mid-funnel channels.

I hope you find these tools useful and by using them, discover new insights for your brand to tap into. While these tools shouldn’t be the only ones in your tool belt, thanks to AdWords Boot Camp, these tools are quickly becoming my favorites!