Yahoo! Improves Clues

If you are conducting search engine marketing through Yahoo! and using Yahoo's Clues product, their feature that allows search marketers and users insight into the key search trends that are being conducted across Yahoo's properties, then the experience so far has been a little frustrating.  Historical trend data only went back a month, and often marketers could only see the top overall trends; fine if you wanted to see who was talking about Angelina Jolie, not so much use for a local marketer looking for product trends.

However, according to news posted on the Yahoo! Search Blog, this frustration could soon be a thing of the past.  Yahoo! are upgrading the tool, both in terms of usability and data, which could make it much more useful.

New developments include a more user-friendly interface, which highlights the most searched for terms and displays trend analysis.  Users can search data from the front page, and now that data goes back a full year and covers three times as many search terms as before.

Marketers can also filter results by time range, gender, age and location, or some combination of these, and the results will be displayed on improved geographical heat maps.  All global searches in English are now incorporated.  

Any search marketer using Yahoo! is likely to see this as an improvement, but the real benefit will be felt by small local marketers who will now be able to narrow down a far better view of local search trends and yearly patterns; far more useful than, say, the top UK trends for the last month overall.