What’s the difference between social and search data?

What is social data?

Social data is found throughout social media and emerges from what social media users share publicly on their accounts. Information that can be collected from social data includes text, images, location, language, biographical information etc.

It is extremely valuable to marketers who seek out customer insights based on social media behaviors and preferences. We measure social data through engagement metrics such as shares, likes and comments to segment audiences based on their interests and opinions.

What is search data?

Search data is collected from search engines - and is based on the web search queries that users make to satisfy their curiosity or interest in a topic. 

Search data allows marketers to target audiences based on how they think, as we can analyze the search queries they choose to input into the search engine text field. Search data is most often used to measure visibility and traffic from search results.

What kind of insights do search & social data yield?

Search and social data work best together. In aggregate, they can deliver insights into how people's collective mindsets might be changing about a topic. 

Above, a graph showing interest in plant-based foods by matching search data & social data, from our blog post on how the conversation about plant-based foods has changed (TLDR; it's all about the burger now).