Web Analytics India

Excel Tip 4: Excel 2003 and 2007 – A quick search volume analysis

-contributed by Deep Moni Hazarika

Around the middle of February 2006, Microsoft’s new office suite was getting the focus after years of rumor and speculation. MS Excel RTM (Released to Manufacturing) was finally announced mid-November, but it was only in early 2007 that the product was finally available for purchase for the public. Here is a snapshot of searches related to Excel 2003 and Excel 2007 for all regions from 2004 onwards and a few observations on it.

The following are my observations from this trend:

• The trends are not for absolute search traffic numbers, but the average search traffic scaled to 1.0 in the chosen time period. The search volume here more or less shows the extent of excel usage.
• Excel 2007 gained popularity and soon crossed the general trend line of Excel 2003 related searches as soon as it was ready for purchase.
• There is a certain mass of loyal users who have adhered comfortably with excel 2003 and still continue to use it.
• Towards the end of 2007, there was a spreadsheet calculation bug in news related to math multiplication and that generated a major search spike.
• A major dip is visible towards the end of 2008. A similar dip was also there in 2007 end. Looking back at the same period of previous years for Excel 2003, the use of spreadsheets actually drops around the holiday period. People stay away from serious work during this time, I guess!

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