For quite some time now, John Battelle, author and general search guru, has been looking to understand how the 'great unwashed' signal their motivations and wants by using search engines and social media channels. In his original blog post he articulated how this huge corpus of data can be of huge value to search marketers. But how many of us actively mine this "database of intentions" for the good of our search campaigns? In my experience, it can vary across industries.

Slow-burning intent

Given the high ROI, search engine marketers working for finance brands invariably do put a lot of effort into considering the nature of queries that stem from the changes occurring in the economy. As my colleague Dave points out, there are typically three forms of intent when it comes to classifying search queries: navigational, informational and transactional. Whilst a lot of event and media-driven search queries tend to come from people searching for hard news stories, these can very frequently evolve to become transactional. Understanding the migration between the two and applying smart PPC tactics can lead to even better ROI from a channel that keeps on giving.

Mapping offline and online data sources is becoming more popular. There is inherent value in understanding what this "database of intentions" is at the earliest opportunity and how marketers can take advantage of this insight. Mining this data surfaces trends that can allow marketers to make decisions much earlier, thereby establishing good search history at a much cheaper cost per click (CPC) before the crowd arrives. Sometimes this data is simply just a good way of confirming hunches that we all have about public mood or sentiment.

One example of this type of mapping exercise is in the area of stock trading. Searching on stock symbol queries is a popular activity on Bing and when this search traffic data is paired with actual stock trading volumes, it makes for interesting viewing. The chart below plots the volume of trading for 'Travelzoo' shares on the Dow Jones in 2011 against the volume of searches for the Travelzoo stock symbol (tzoo) on Bing.

Other interesting examples that show correlation between offline and online include the impact of domestic weather and currency rates on people's search intent.

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"Event intent"

It's fair to say that the media plays a significant role in the reporting of economic affairs. Unfortunately, these days most freesheet headlines have commuters breaking out in a cold sweat at the prospect of impending job losses, bailouts, inflation/deflation and interest rate hikes. But can you imagine the fear that Northern Rock customers felt when they learned from a BBC report that their savings where at risk.

"At 8.30 pm on the evening of Thursday 13 September 2007 the BBC reported that Northern Rock plc had asked for and received emergency financial support from the Bank of England. The terms of the funding facility were finalised in the early hours of Friday 14 September and announced at 7.00 am that day. That day, long queues began to form outside some of Northern Rock's branches; later, its website collapsed and its phone lines were reported to be jammed. The first bank run in the United Kingdom since Victorian times was underway."

(Extract from the British Treasury Committee's report on the collapse of Northern Rock)

At the same time, searches on Northern Rock-related keywords instantly quadrupled. People were reacting online in an attempt to find a safe place for their hard-earned money. Other retail banks tried to lure customers with strong paid search campaigns as consumers looked to split their savings across banks in order to avail of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme guarantee of £50,000 per institution. All in all search became an even-more desirable medium in a time of crisis - even within what has traditionally been one of the more competitive verticals in the UK.

If you want to mine this database of intentions, then feel free to head over to www.letsearchmakeyousmarter.com and download the Microsoft Advertising Intelligence. For data on slow-burning intent, it's probably best to look at data from a monthly perspective. "Event intent" can be teased out from the daily search data that's available.

Find out more on how to use Microsoft Advertising Intelligence with the help of this blog post.