Google trends is going to be of interest to any communicator interested in measurement. It’s a quick way to see where attention is being directed and what folks are interested in.

Steve has a big post on this and a good case study on using the different blog measurement tools. He makes my case – visually – that the next big frontier in communications measurement will be correlation. That is the “mash-up” of a variety of communications measurement tools and sources to provide an integrated view of performance and effects of different programs.

I’m going to add a post on this over the weekend that explains some of my thinking but here are a couple of other takeaways I would add to the list as I correlate our marketing data:

• News drives conversation and searches (not a big revelation) – agree with Steve.
• It’s important to set up searches for a new brand before it launches, just to make sure it doesn’t leak – Yes. You also need to consider the impact of brands or search terms that deliver many results. These cloud the output.
• It takes time to go from conversation to and searches to actual traffic. Yes.
• You can benchmark your product launch against that of a competitor using these tools to see how you did. You can also layer in clip report data.
• If you are in tech, look at the impact of some of the next generation analysts – the impact in terms of traffic to your site can be remarkable.
• Measure the relative cost of SEO vs. other elements of the marketing mix using these tools.
• Think about configuring landing pages on your site for news announcements. Don’t expect people to hop around your site aggregating the various elements of what you are talking about. Your blog is a perfect place to do this.