Google Power Search

Chapter 3. Initial Market Research Using Google

Now that you are familiar with the range of Google operators to refine your searches, it’s time to put the knowledge into practice in the real world. It’s also a good time to delve a little deeper into the essential features of the Google interface.

In this chapter, we’ll apply some interesting Google tactics to search for information about the food industry. Then I’ll explain the essential features of the Google user interface—the virtual place where you spend most of your time interacting with Google—and apply those to our search example as well.

A Search for Market Research in the Food Industry

Let’s imagine that your task is to find market research on the food industry. Specifically, you are looking for details on frozen vegetable consumption within the United States—including consumer demographics, the size of the market in dollars, and so on. You are writing a business plan for the potential launch of a line of frozen organic peas.

Your strategy is to drill down into the results with a refined search query.

You might try a search on market research to start your quest, just to see what Google suggests and recommends as query refinements. However, that’s typically going to be far too generic a query for a direct search. Market research food industry is better, but still there’s a lot of noise in the search results to sift through.

A search for market research frozen vegetables would be better still, but not as laser-focused as it could ...