We thought that Michael Jackson would be an interesting subject to kick off our weekly keyword research and demonstrate the power of our keyword research tools.
We looked at all the identifiable search terms on Google relating to MJ and grouped them into dimensions and then sub-segments to gain insight into how people are currently searching the Internet for information on the King of Pop. Although this research was completed after his death on June 25, 2009, search terms surrounding his death are not yet appearing in any significant volume.
Let’s skip straight to the results and then look at the methodology .
Results
Percentage of Michael Jackson searches on Google by dimension
As you’d expect, the majority of search terms include some variation of Michael Jackson’s name. The next most popular set of dimensions are all related to the titles of songs and albums showing that interest in MJ was primarily around his works. The remaining dimensions are generally focused on attributes of MJ.
Percentage of Michael Jackson searches on Google by decade
It’s very clear that MJ’s most popular work was produced in the 80s and this is mostly due to the incredible success of Thriller which has maintained a huge long term interest until today. His most recent work from the 2000s does not generate significant interest.
Percentage of Michael Jackson searches on Google by song
The chart shows that the most popular song is Thriller but this may be skewed as it’s impossible to separate searches for the album by the same name. Billie Jean is not far behind and as this could not be confused with an album, it’s likely to be a strong contender for his most popular song.
Percentage of Michael Jackson searches on Google by album
As with the songs, it’s impossible to separate album from song title searches but the volume of searches for Thriller shows that it is clearly the most popular. Both Bad and Dangerous also remain significantly more popular than any other albums.
Percentage of Michael Jackson searches on Google by video
The chart shows that the most popular searches were non-specific but the most popular specific video by far was Thriller, once again demonstrating its long term popularity. Smooth Criminal is a distant second place followed by Bad.
Percentage of Michael Jackson searches on Google by medium
The chart shows that people are searching broadly for a variety of different media including tickets and live performances which may have been triggered by the This Is It tour.
Percentage of Michael Jackson searches on Google by news, information and events
The most popular searches are for general news. Searches for around the accusations of child molestation and the trial are present although relatively small compared to other aspects of his life including information around his children and Neverland.
Percentage of Michael Jackson searches on Google by clothing
The most popular clothing related search term is ‘shirt’ which is likely to refer to t-shirts rather than MJ’s own clothing. The next most popular is ‘jacket’ which appears to be searches for the iconic Thriller leather jacket, once again demonstration the long term appeal of this work. Searches for the glove are also popular.
Percentage of Michael Jackson searches on Google by images
The chart shows that most people use the term ‘pictures’ rather than ‘photos’ and ‘images’.
Percentage of Michael Jackson searches on Google by miscellaneous segments
Methodology
A set of seed keywords related to Michael Jackson were used to generate keyword data from the Google AdWords Keyword Tool. The results were tailored to English, All Countries and Territories.
The suggestions in the ’Additional keywords to be considered’ demonstrated a high degree of relevancy and were also included.
The keyword list was deduplicated and irrelevant keywords removed manually leaving a total of 1488 keywords with detectable search volume.
The Exact Match Global Monthly Search Volume figures were extracted for all relevant keywords.
The keywords were grouped into a number of different dimensions and then allocated into segments.
Identifying relevancy can be difficult. For example, searches for Thriller are a mixture of album and song searches and it’s impossible to determine the percentage of each. This results in a likely skew for the songs data.
Google returns quite a few search terms with a avlue of -1. Google only shows positive values from 12 searches upwards but the keywords showing -1 obviously have some searches or they would not be included in the list. For this research, they were discarded but they could be included with a nominal value of 1 and this could be useful for low volume keyword topics where the long tail becomes more valuable.
Let us know what you think and if you’ve found this interesting.