Top Five Ways Small Businesses Can Use Google Search

Top Five Ways Small Businesses Can Use Google Search

 By Michael Miller


Almost everybody uses Google search. It’s by far the most popular search engine on the web today. You probably use Google search personally to find all those things you couldn’t find otherwise. And when it comes to your business, you can also use Google to help you get smarter about your customers, your competition and your industry.
Here are five ways you can use Google search for business to research your market and and gather competitive intelligence. It’s all about knowing what to search for!

1. Stay on Top of Industry Trends

Google is your gateway to all sorts of information on the web, including information about the industry you’re in. There are a few ways to find information your industry on Google. The most obvious is to do a general search for your industry name. That will probably bring up a variety of trade groups and news sources. Click through to see what’s available there.
You can fine-tune your search by searching for industry statistics. Adding that one little word (“statistics”) is likely to return all sorts of data from industry groups and third-party analysts. You can also search for industry trends and industry research.
Finally, you can use Google to search for more recent industry news. The best way to do this is to use Google News, located at news.google.com. Enter the name of your industry in the search box on the Google News page, and Google will return a list of news stories about your industry. You can use the time filter in the left column to display the most recent stories; you can display stories posted in the past hour, past 24 hours, past week, past month or any custom date range.

2. Find Out What Your Competition is Doing

Keeping abreast of industry trends is good, but you might also want to know what your competitors are up to. Rest assured, if they’re doing something online (or if anyone is saying something about them online), chances are Google knows about it.
Discovering competitive information is as simple as searching on a competitor’s company name, brand name or product name. Skip past the obvious results (the company’s own web page, for example) and seek results a little lower down the list. Look for results that talk about new products and other interesting initiatives.
You can fine-tune these results by adding the words news, announcements, new products, openings and the like to your search by competitor name. Think about what you want to know about your competition, and then search for it.
If you want to get sneaky, search Google for the names of the company’s key management team. Sometimes an individual will say something online outside of formal company channels; you may be surprised what inside information you can turn up in this fashion.

3. Find Out What Others are Saying About You

Google isn’t just for researching the competition. You can also use Google to find out what others are saying about your company online. This is the corporate equivalent of Googling yourself – except, in this instance, you’re Googling your company or brand.
The key here is to move beyond the stuff you already know. Here are a few tips:

• Don’t limit your search to just your company name. Also search for your key brands and products, and maybe even the advertising slogans you use; search for however customers may refer to you.
• Modify your search for your company/brand name with the words complaints, problems, news, new, rumors and so forth. This will help to fine-tune the results.
• Use Google News search instead of (or in addition to) the full web search; this way you’ll turn up news stories about your company or brand.
• Search for your company’s senior management, by name. You want to know what the Internet is saying about your people as well as your company.

4. Keep Your Prices Competitive

Setting the right price is a continuing challenge. Fortunately, Google does a good job scouring the web to find out what a given item is selling for from various merchants.
The key here is to use Google Product Search, located at http://www.google.com/shopping/. Enter the product name or model number into the search box; Google now returns a page of retailers who sell this product, and their current prices. You can fine-tune the results to show only online stores or only local stores near you.
Now, don’t panic if you see a store or two substantially undercutting your prices, especially if they’re online stores. Remember that customers often have to pay shipping costs for items purchased online; you want to combine the selling price with the shipping cost to get a true price to customers. Local merchants can typically charge a little more than online merchants because their customers don’t have to pay to have it shipped to them.

5. Look for Leads

If you’re a B2B company, you can use Google to search for potential leads. This is most easily done by searching Google for appropriate LinkedIn profiles. (Yes, Google indexes LinkedIn.) As you’re probably aware, LinkedIn is a social network for business professionals; it’s a great place to find B2B leads.
The key here is to fine-tune your search query to search only the LinkedIn site. This means using the site: operator to restrict Google’s search to the LinkedIn site, like this: site:linkedin.com. You can then follow this operator with keywords associated with your industry or product.
For example, if you’re in the accounting business, you can search for professionals in with the words accountant or finance in their titles. If you’re selling office supplies, you can target purchasing staff by searching for people with the words purchasing or buyer in their titles. If you’re a local business, you can restrict your search locally by including your city or region name in the query.
From there it’s a simple matter of clicking through the various search results until you find those individuals that hold the most promise. You can then contact them directly from your own LinkedIn account.



What ways have you used Google Search to find helpful information for your business?

Source:http://www.deluxeforbusiness.com/learning-center/article/396/top_five_ways_small_businesses_can_use_google_search