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Engine Optimization Search Engine Optimization, or SEO for short, is an internet marketing strategy that aims to increase website traffic from search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. There are many technical components to SEO, which can include editing content, HTML, and linking between websites. The first step to any SEO project is keyword research. This process analyzes specific terms searchers use when looking up information about a topic in search engines. This allows us to understand how people think about a certain topic, and enables us to best tailor website language and code to increase traffic from search engines.The purpose of this report is to show search trends in the way people think about a certain topic, in this case global warming. In order to properly analyze how people search, we obtained a representative sample set of the top 1,000 queries containing the phrase global warming and their relative search volume. By categorizing these keywords and looking for patterns, we can make assessments on how people search for the term, and objective recommendations on how best to optimize a website. The top categories and keywords are included in this report. Overall Summary While examining the data, we found that there were three major themes surrounding global warming search: General search (making up almost half of our total search) The global warming debate (fourth largest category) The cause and effect relationship (first and second largest categories) Though each of them provided specific insights on their own, we found commonly that they demonstrated a lack of knowledge on the concept of global warming, especially when it comes to identifying its causes. When it comes to search engine optimization, your word choice is key. Google and other search engines do not read paragraphs or ideas, they only see words. Any misspellings, pluralizing, or variation on a word will be taken into account. There were many variations on words in our top categories, such as pictures vs. pics vs. images, and articles vs. news. The term global warming is also known under different names, the top two most prevalent being climate change and greenhouse gases. Though these are recognizable terms for global warming, we would not recommend using them as SEO tactics. Queries with Climate change are numerous enough to make up the 20th top category in our searches. However, there are nearly one and a half times more sites on the internet optimized for climate change (30.9 million) than there are for global warming (22.3 million), making the competition much higher. Websites optimized for greenhouse gases had far less competition with 1/20th the amount of

optimized sites on the internet (909,000), but the search volume was much lower, with only 77 queries from our sample (less than 0.01%). General search We found that almost half of the search queries were general searches, with the rest being specifi c searches relati ng to global warming. The top 5 specifi c category searches were: eff ects, causes, facts, debate, and pictures. Key Findings: 44% of categorized search terms were general searches (global warming) and 3% were defi niti on searches (What is...), for a total of 47% of searches asking for general informati on. The high demand for general informati on refl ects a lack of specifi c understanding about the topic overall. Pictures ranked 5th in category popularity with the term pictures being used 75% of the ti me. However, users were two ti mes more likely to use the word pics over the word photos, and 4 ti mes more likely to use it over the word images. News ranked 6th in category popularity. In this category, users were 10 ti mes more likely to use the word arti cles over the word news. Stati sti cs ranked 9th in category popularity. The predominant keyword was graphs, being used over twice as much as both stati sti cs and charts, respecti vely. Category Popularity The top categories with relati ve search popularity, not including general searches The debate Global Warming is a particularly controversial topic in politics, science, and society in general. Thus, it is natural that a large volume of search terms reflect a biased sentiment, or questions the merits of the topic. This search data allows us to test the overall temperature of the debate. Key Findings:

 When users sought information about the global warming debate, they were 4 times more likely to search for arguments against than arguments for. In the past year, the percentage of Americans that believe in global warming has dipped from 80% to 72% (Washington Post-ABC News poll). This explains the increased search for arguments against global warming, even though the majority of Americans still believe it is happening. Other categories that did not fall within the debate but still reflected a positive or negative outlook: - Prevention: 616 searches - Hoax: 585 searches - Solutions: 381 searches - Myth: 305 searches - Evidence: 215 searches Keyword Research: Global Warming | Arguments Arguments Neutral Arguments For 11% of users sought information or made statements honoring the existence of global warming. Top 3 search terms: arguments for global warming global warming arguments global warming is real Arguments Against 47% of users sought information or made statements disproving the existence of global warming. Top 3 search terms: arguments against global warming global warming is not true global warming is not real Neutral 42% of users solicited arguments from both sides, or questioned the debate in general. Top 3 search terms: why should we care about global warming is global warming real global warming debate CA USES vs. EffectS

The process of global warming has a very particular cause and effect relationship, as many elements can be both cause AND effect (such as humans and animals). In order for us to better understand the data, we also broke down each category into general search (i.e. effects of global warming) and specific search (i.e. effects of global warming on polar bears). It is important for us to make this distinction because general searches mean the user does not know what they are looking for, whereas specific searches indicate the user is more knowledgeable. Key Findings: When users sought information about the causes and effects of global warming, they were 3 times more likely to perform a general cause search over a specific one, but were just as likely to use a general effects search term as a specific one. This means that searchers are more aware of the effects of global warming than the causes. It is clear that searchers are aware that humans are the main cause of global warming. However, the high-use of the generic search term humans suggests that they are not clear as to why, which is mainly due to co2 emissions and pollution (PlanetSave.com). The low-volume searches for these specific causes (46 for pollution and 12 for co2) indicates a lack of knowledge on this subject. Causes is a term that can also be used to reflect the effects of global warming, as in the case of global warming causes drought. We see this in a relatively significant volume of search (88 searches, or 10% of the total specific effects searches). The term causes could thus potentially reach a larger amount of people.