From Tim Keelan, Senior Account Manager at Hitwise:
Using Hitwise Search Intelligence, our clients have mined millions of keywords over the years. These keywords provided new SEM/SEO opportunities, as well as insight into understanding user intent. With the launch of Search Term Sequencing, clients will now be able to take their efforts to the next level with affinity keywords.
A helpful tool for expanding keyword terms has always been the Search Term Variation Report. Here you’ll find the top keywords that included the words “honda” and “accord” for the past 12 weeks.

From here we get a great sense of the top ways people are searching for Honda Accords, but what if you want to see the top cars people are comparing the Honda Accord against? For that we’ll need Hitwise Search Term Sequence Reports.
Using Search Term Sequencing we can see the most popular terms across five searches performed before or after any given term. Instead of just seeing terms that include the words “honda” and “accord,” we’ll see all the other searches that brought the user to Honda Accord and what they search for afterwards.

Looking at the top searches before “Honda Accord” we can see other cars people are also researching. From here we can gather most people considered the Nissan Maxima, Nissan Altima, and Toyota Camry comparable cars during the research period. This can be helpful to fine tune SEM campaigns or to develop content.
When we look at the search terms following “Honda Accord,” it looks fairly positive for Honda. Instead of competitive models showing on top, we see most users are getting more specific within the Honda family of cars.
Search Term Sequencing will open a new level on users’ search intent and behavior on the web.
For more ways to apply this powerful new tool, contact either your Account Manager or Hitwise at info@hitwise.com or 212.380.2900.