checking interest of an unbuilt website

suey71

hi. webdesign + research is not my forte so excuse my lack of knowledge in this area. i was looking at a Tim Ferris blog earlier and i was interested to hear how he tested the publics interest in a new website by using certain GoogleAdwords and keywords to see how many hits the site got before it was built. when people visited the site all they got was a page saying that the site was under construction. then he checked how many visitors the site got. I thought this was a great idea to see if a business idea was feasible. I'd hate to get a bank loan to set up an online business only to discover that it wouldn't work. I was wondering if this is common practice amongst web developers in general? and if so how much would it cost to have it done as i couldn't do it myself. again i'm sorry this sound silly.

gypsy777

Thats one way to test the water though I expect the adwords campaign would get slapped pretty quickly when you're just sending people to an under-construction page.

A cheaper alternative is to use googles external keyword tool to get estimates on the number of searches certain search queries get.

https://adwords.google.ie/select/KeywordToolExternal

Numbers arent totally acurate and in some case can be way off but will give you some quick info when looking at given business niches.

suey71

that was so helpful. thanks again.