Search

(Via Reddit, who I’m really happy for)

We hope this info helps you plan your next car-buying trip. We also hope you’ll keep us in mind for when you need website design and development!

Supply and demand: the lower the demand, the lower the price.

So when is the demand for cars the lowest?

According to Google Trends, people search car-related keyterms most in the summer and least in the winter, with a small spike right before Christmas.

In case you’ve never used Google Trends: it lets you look at search frequency over time for terms of your choosing. Let’s try the most obvious ones. Car and cars are huge terms, so we get pretty clear data:

The second tier shows more volatility since these terms aren’t quite as popular, but the trend is still apparent.

This last batch is all over the place, but still fits the trend. Somebody went crazy looking to buy car late last year, though!

We were planning on buying a used car by September of this year (which seemed to be the time when most of these lined up, more or less), but after seeing this we might wait until late October. What do you think?

What are some other creative ways to use search engines to your advantage?

While bloggers are known to nerd out at the idea that we’ll wake up tomorrow to see Twitter or Facebook (or Bing!) have taken Google’s throne, the near future likely looks more like this:

Cool Search Engines That Are Not Google

Instead of a Cold War between Google and the social media giants, doesn’t it seem more feasible that people will rely less on one engine for everything? Collecta is a better real-time search engine than Twitter (and, therefore, MUCH better than Google), but is it better than Almost.at?

Clearly, one search engine cannot meet every need. And, with the explosion of mobile apps, average users are more comfortable than ever with the idea of using different software tools for different tasks.

To use a particular example, I spent a couple hours last weekend comparing football ticket prices at several different broker sites. With FanSnap, I could’ve spent a couple minutes. Sure, Google could come up with something similar, but do we really need them to?

Regarding this…

There are at least 10 glaring reasons why this is silly, which we’ll set aside. Here’s the #1 most overlooked reason why this won’t happen:

1. The popular links on Twitter are all about Twitter.

Most Twittering is still about the act of Twittering. “What are you doing?” still means “In what context are you Twittering?”

And this is fine. Many people also use Twitter in other ways, but none that amount to a great search engine.

The problem with The Social is it’s made up of people, and people mostly like to talk about themselves.

Just imagine we live in a world where people look up things like the history of the Napoleanic Wars, where to buy AV cables nearby, pics of Gina de Laurentiis, and Marvin Gaye singing the national anthem.

Some people, mostly those who live outside of Twitter, like to use search engines to search for things… even things besides Twitter and why Twitter is the new Google.

Yes, we all yearn to reach the great cloud New Jerusalem, socially zenloading wonder into our hivemind. And yes Twitter is useful, exciting, and fun, and it’s cool to see people and businesses finding new ways to use it. And, most importantly, Google will soon have to find special places in its algorithms for Twitter’s impact on the ways people use links now.

But let’s take a break from Twittering THE NEW GOOGLE every time Jimmy Fallon mentions a website on TV.