Google Reveals What People Are Buying Online

Wouldn’t it be great if we could get insights as to which products people preferred. We could get research into which products we should merchandise more prominently. Google just released a new trending tool for those of us curious what people are buying and selling online. From the official Google Checkout Blog:

Many of you are aware of Google Trends, the handy tool that enables you to track and compare what Google users are searching for. Now imagine a similar tool that can give you some insight into what people are buying and selling online. That’s exactly what we’ve built: Google Checkout Trends aggregates the sales data of Google Checkout merchants and charts it in a matter of seconds. (Of course, all the data is anonymized first.) So if you’re interested in how sales of Batman or Spider Man paraphernalia compare, or are wondering just how popular Ugg boots are these days, visit Checkout Trends for a glimpse into online shopping. Go ahead and try it out — and get creative with the searches. You may be surprised at what you find.

I was having problems this morning getting any results from my searches, even from their six suggested searches. Every time I searched, I received a message that said:

Your terms – ipod, zune do not have enough search volume to show graphs.

If you want to see what the graph of results looks like you can find people discussing it here, here, and here.

Regardless, I think once these issues are resolved, like Google Trends this will provide some interesting data. One thing to keep in mind though is that in our analysis for our 2007 Customer Experience Retail study we found only 10% of the 300+ top retailers offered Google Checkout as an option.

How meaningful will the results really be?

Have you had better luck with Google Checkout Trends? Your impressions?

In Google, Interesting Websites, Research, Retail, e-commerce

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Comments (6)

Mary Schmidt Marketing Troubleshooter » Martini Musing: Web Stuff You Can Use
January 11th, 2008
11:01 am

[...] What Do People Buy Online? Bryan Eisenberg tells us what Google knows. [...]
Sayam Khan
January 11th, 2008
1:43 pm

Hi Bryan,

I have been playing with it for a while now. The results are disappointing.

In our vertical we don’t have any major players using Google Checkout. Hence, no data.
Elena
January 11th, 2008
4:45 pm

Just a thought:

It must be disappointing for the Google Checkout customers to provide the whole wide world with competitive info.
Rick C
January 14th, 2008
2:58 pm

Useless, in a word. searching for an obscure item such as “kettlebell” shows up to 100 units being sold online in one day – unlikely (too high), and then searching for “dvd” shows 45 units selling in a single day – also unlikely (too low). They need to explain the data to the user better….something very wrong with this tool.
Google Reveals What People Are Buying Online
March 10th, 2008
4:57 am

[...] Many of you are aware of Google Trends, the handy tool that enables you to track and compare what Google users are searching for. Now imagine a similar tool that can give you some insight into what people are buying and selling online. That’s exactly what we’ve built: Google Checkout Trends aggregates the sales data of Google Checkout merchants and charts it in a matter of seconds. Google Reveals What People Are Buying Online [...]
Daniel
December 30th, 2008
3:19 pm

I wish someone would complie a list of the top 20 things that people buy online. Google trends is good but it doesn’t tell you want the top trends are.

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