Google Trends has been useful tool for some now. You could compare two competitors to see which one was getting the most traffic to their website and use the information you find to make your own website more competitive. Google’s newest tool, which can be even better, is Google Insight.

Google Insight allows you to analyze keyword data by region and time. In other words, you can see search trends by month, quarter, year, or across multiple years. You can also analyze search trends by region, which is very helpful for looking at the competitive landscape for your niche at the local level, a limitation of Google Trends.

Let’s say you want to start a state-wide auction site similar to eBay that allows farmers to buy and sell farm equipment within your state. You can see how many searches for farm equipment within your state or region have been conducted in the last 90 days or even the last year. You can also see which search terms related to farm equipment have been the most popular.

Just for grins, I decided to see what the data for farm equipment would look like in Michigan over the last 90 days. Here’s what I found: On June 29, the search volume for farm equipment in Michigan was high. By mid-July, it had dropped to almost half. And by the end of July just tapered off altogether.

Now I’m not altogether sure that those end-of-July figures are 100% accurate, but if I look at the trend over the past year then I can see that the most number of searches for farm equipment in Michigan took place at the beginning of May. Again, I see a huge dip toward the end of July. This makes sense since I know that farmers usually start plowing fields and working their crops in early summer/late spring and by the end of the summer the need for farm equipment goes down. But suppose I want to compare that data for the states of Michigan and illinois? I find that the trend in Illinois is similar to the trend in Michigan, but there have been more overall searches for farm equipment in Illinois.

This is the kind of drill down research you can do with Google Insight. It’s a very helpful tool, to be sure, and can be used to narrow a niche or broaden one that is too small BEFORE you commit yourself to your business model.

I wonder if this has had anything to do with the remake of Propeller, the popular social bookmarking tool. The Propeller community has spoken loudly that it is not happy with the new Propeller look. Now, Time Warner is announcing that it wants to sell AOL. The interesting thing about that is the list of companies interested in buying. Among them are Microsoft and Yahoo!

Yahoo! taking an interest in buying a property the size of AOL is very interesting considering that it has been the subject of for sale notices this year. One of its potential buyers is reportedly competing for AOLs love, but analysts say Yahoo! is offering too much. Surprise!

I don’t think Yahoo! needs to be thinking about buying properties right now. They need to clean up their internal house before taking on new properties and quit trying to compete with a blindfold on. I’d love to see Yahoo! turn their business around and be more competitive.