Great follow-up to the post I had yesterday about readers picking stories. Lou Rosenfeld blogs about a conversation he had with Guy Valerio of the Financial Times of London. The discussion is about using search logs to predict what stories may be out there.

If a company name shows up with great frequency in the search logs but hasn't been covered recently in FT articles, it may indicate a developing story about to hit daylight. Guy finds that this sort of anomaly is often a useful predictor of what the FT should consider covering in the coming days. Conversely, if a company name drops off the search logs, interest in a related story line may be waning, and FT can choose to invest its reporting resources elsewhere.

On the surface it may sound similar to a per-click tracking, but the search logs can help expose what is not on the site that readers are looking for (they can't click on the story if it's not there).

Of course now that the cat is out of the bag so-to-speak, how long before a PR flak looking to generate interest in a client enters the name of the company in the search tool repeatedly?

I make it a habit to analyze client's search logs and to show them how to as well. It is amazing some of the things that appear. You quickly learn what your audience is looking for.