Mobile Shopping, Google Trends, and eBay in India
Brian Smith over at ComparisonEngines.com is attending Google Press Day. He mentioned a resource, amonst others, on his blog that Google is releasing called Google Trends. I did a few e-commerce related searches on it to give it a try… Then a quick search for “Mobile Shopping” immediately caught my attention. Here is what the City-based breakdown looks like:
Look at that… The majority of search is coming from India. Other cities have much less search volume, and no US city is even in the top 10. I then recalled reading somewhere recently about the importance of mobile commerce in India… Oh yes, eBay just launched eBay.in Affiliate Program, now I remember. Directly from their May 2006 newsletter:
“As internet entrepreneurs, India and the eBay.in Affiliate Program represents an attractive global opportunity to website publishers. India, with a population of approximately 1.1 billion, and with just over 39% internet penetration, represents a large opportunity for affiliates. eCommerce is exploding in this English-speaking, technologically sophisticated market. One thing to consider: mobile applications and SMS are vital components of internet usage in India.”
My first time reading it I was thinking yeah, yeah. Now I’m thinking up how to get in the game!
Final Note: While the trend data from Google appears to be very useful, although my experience with it has been short to this point, it is also important to note the discrepancies between similiar keywords such as “price comparison” and “comparison shopping”. It can give you a good idea of what different regions and cultures refer to similiar terms as, which may be important in your SEO or SEM campaign. Using it in conjunction with the Overture keyword tool, and WordTracker could become a very powerful combination.
Technorati Tags: mobile shopping, mobile commerce, eBay India, google trends, SEO
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Hi Marc. On the same note, ShopWiki launched a mobile shopping search site today (http://m.shopwiki.com/). More info at http://www.shopwiki.com/wiki/help:mobile search/. Sorry to mention it in the comments — I hate that — but I can’t find your e-mail anywhere.