Market research is essential before launching anything new—but traditional tools like surveys and interviews rely on a flawed assumption: that people are completely honest and self-aware.
In reality, especially with sensitive topics, that’s rarely true. That’s why the best market research strategies pull from multiple data sources—each offering a different, complementary view of the customer.
In this guide, we’ll break down the top tools across three types of data:
Search data shows what people want. It’s massive, unbiased, and real-time—perfect for spotting trends and predicting demand.
Social and media data shows what people say. It helps you track sentiment, follow narratives, and understand how opinions form and spread.
Survey data shows what people report. It brings structure and precision, letting you dig deep into specific audiences and validate ideas directly.
TLDR
Not sure which tool is right for you? It depends on the kind of question you’re trying to answer. Here’s a quick guide to help you choose the best fit based on your goal.
If you're...
Trying to spot early trends before they go mainstream: Use Glimpse—provides real-time search data, forecasting, and trend discovery across any market.
Sizing a market or analyzing digital competitors: Use SEMrush—gives keyword data, SERP tracking, and competitive market insights.
Monitoring how your brand or topic is being discussed: Use Meltwater—tracks news, blogs, and social chatter in real time.
Understanding how people feel about an issue or trend: Use Brandwatch—analyzes public conversation, sentiment, and shifts in perception.
Building audience segments or personas across countries: Use GWI—global survey data with rich demographic and behavioral filtering.
Testing messaging, product ideas, or market readiness: Use Attest—fast, targeted surveys with complete control over the audience sample.
Comparison Chart
Keep reading below for a deep dive into each tool, organized by data source.
Search Data Tools
1. Glimpse
If you want to know what people really care about—before they tell anyone else—start with search data.
Glimpse is a market research tool built on top of Google Trends, enhancing it with real-time search volume, superior trend discovery, forecasting, and more. It helps you spot what people are actually increasingly searching for—not what they say on a survey or post on social media. It’s the fastest and most reliable way to identify emerging trends and shifts in consumer demand, all backed by billions of daily searches.
Pros
Trend discovery: Spot the fastest-growing search trends in any market to get ahead of the curve and beat the competition.
Forecast: Predict the next 12 months of demand to time your launch perfectly with the market.
Unbiased: Unlike surveys and questionnaires, Glimpse data is unbiased and purely representative of the market (see other advantages of search data).
Massive: Over 8.5 billion searches are made on Google every day, providing arguably the most comprehensive dataset in the world. Glimpse helps you tap into this data like no other tool.
Real-time + historical: Analyze a topic's trajectory on any time horizon - zoom in to view minute-to-minute changes or zoom out to see the long-term trajectory over decades.
Easy to use: Glimpse's UI is simple, intuitive, and takes little time to learn or train.
Affordable: Free plan available, with paid plans starting at $49/mo
API access: Glimpse also offers Google Trends data via API, enriched with absolute search volume
Cons
No direct consumer input: Observes and reports, as opposed to asks.
Limited sentiment analysis: Can show you that, say, searches for "is X bad for you" are increasing, but provides limited analysis on how people feel about a topic.
Limited audience segmentation: Can filter by geographic, but not age/gender/income/etc.
Limited browser support: Only available on Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Opera, Brave, and Vivaldi.
Price
Free plan provides up to 10 free searches per month, with additional access starting at $49/mo.
Feature Walkthrough
Glimpse is built on top of Google Trends and uses the same core interface, showing the searches over time for any topic. However, unlike Google Trends, it also shows the absolute volume of searches, the growth rate, and even the forecast trajectory.
Here are the results for an emerging trend, "organ supplements":
In addition to its performance over time, you can view what people commonly search alongside any topic, as well as which social platforms its most discussed on:
If you want to spot new search trends in any market, just type in a category and you’ll immediately see dozens of fast-growing topics in that category:
Glimpse helps you spot real, long-term trends—not just short-lived spikes—by analyzing historical search volume over time, one of the most reliable signals of sustained consumer interest. If searches have been rising steadily, chances are they’ll keep climbing. This gives you the confidence to invest in longer-term projects, like launching a product or shaping strategy.
You can also group keywords into a custom dashboard to compare how different markets are growing—like in this example, where all supplement categories are up, but meat supplements are leading the charge.
Once a keyword is added to your dashboard, you'll get alerts on any changes in search volume, as well as recommended trends related to what you're tracking.
Who should use Glimpse?
Glimpse is the best market research tool for anyone who wants to stay ahead of the curve—whether marketer, strategist, founder, or researcher. It’s built for spotting early signals, validating demand, pulling keyword insights, and tracking the momentum of entire markets.
If you want to base your decisions on what people are actually searching for—rather than just what they say in a survey or social post—then sign up for a free account to get started.
2. SEMrush
SEMrush is an SEO tool with a strong market research use case—especially for understanding the digital landscape.
It’s designed for search professionals, so it comes with a bit of a learning curve, but once you’re in, it gives you a detailed look at what keywords people are searching for, who’s getting the traffic, and how markets are structured online. You can analyze competitors, explore thousands of long-tail keywords, and track how search interest shifts over time. If you’re doing research in a digital space, SEMrush is one of the most powerful tools you can use.
Pros
Shows thousands of long-tail keywords with volume, difficulty, and CPC data.
Lets you analyze competitor traffic, rankings, and content strategies.
Helps map out the digital market and identify major players in any niche.
Tracks keyword performance in search results (SERP) over time.
Useful for building SEO, content, and paid media strategies.
Cons
Interface is complex and assumes some SEO or digital marketing knowledge.
Doesn’t forecast trends or growth trajectories.
No built-in sentiment or consumer opinion data.
Keyword data updates monthly, not in real time.
Premium features can get expensive, especially with add-ons.
Price
Plans start at $139.95/month.
Who should use SEMrush?
Use SEMrush if you want to understand how a market operates online—what people are searching for, who’s getting the traffic, and where gaps exist. Even if your business isn’t fully digital, knowing the online landscape is becoming increasingly essential for anyone that wants to stay relevant in an increasingly digital world.
Social Listening Tools
3. Meltwater
Meltwater is a media monitoring and social listening platform that can also be used for market research. It pulls data from tons of sources—news articles, blogs, forums, and social media sites like Reddit, Instagram, and X. It’s built to help you keep tabs on brand reputation, campaign performance, and public conversation.
Pros:
Tracks mentions across news, blogs, forums, and social platforms
Lets you build custom dashboards to follow topics, trends, or competitors
Breaks down data by region and sentiment (positive, negative, neutral)
Great for seeing how perception changes over time
Cons:
Expensive—starts around $500/month
Lots of features = steeper learning curve
More focused on monitoring known topics, less helpful for discovering new ones
Doesn’t show search intent or direct consumer feedback
Price:
Starts at ~$500/month; enterprise pricing available
Who should use Meltwater?
Use Meltwater if you’re on a brand, PR, or marketing team and need to track how people and media outlets are talking about you (or your competitors). It’s especially good for managing brand reputation and measuring how a campaign is landing in the real world.
4. Brandwatch
Brandwatch is a consumer intelligence platform that also analyzes conversations across a range of online sources. However, while Meltwater focuses more on monitoring media coverage and brand reputation, Brandwatch's strength is pulling out insights from conversations and social data.
As a market research tool, it can help dig up how people feel and talk about topics. While search data shows intent, Brandwatch is great for diving into the context: the sentiment, reactions, and language that people actually use. It’s particularly powerful for spotting shifts in public opinion and tracking how narratives evolve.
Pros
Comprehensive list of media sources for broad coverage
Real-time and historical analysis of public conversation
Strong sentiment tracking with alerts when there are spikes/anomalies
Filters by geography, emotion, language, and source type
Custom dashboards and visualizations
Cons
Not great at capturing behavioral intent like search data
No built-in audience segmentation like survey platforms
Tons of features = higher learning curve and cost—designed for power users
Enterprise-level pricing only (no self-serve or startup tiers)
Price
Custom enterprise pricing.
Who should use Brandwatch?
Use Brandwatch if you want to dig deeper into how and why people talk about a topic online—not just where it’s mentioned. It’s best for teams that need to deeply understand the shifts in consumer conversations/sentiment across media platforms.
Survey Tools
5. GWI
GWI is a consumer research platform that runs large-scale surveys run across 50+ countries, representing over 2.7 billion consumers. It's main selling point is to help you get detailed insights on who your audience is, how they think, etc.
Pros:
Huge dataset with 200,000+ profiling points across demographics, behaviors, and interests.
Global coverage with standardized data across 50+ countries.
Can filter results by demographic, geography, income, and more.
Updated quarterly with simple dashboards and filters.
Cons:
Expensive—pricing is custom and typically enterprise-level.
Relies on self-reported data, which can be biased, especially on sensitive topics (not the case with search data).
Depth varies by market—some countries are more detailed than others.
Better for analyzing existing markets rather than spotting new ones.
Price:
Custom pricing, typically enterprise-level. Not publicly listed.
Who should use GWI?
Use GWI if you want to build or refine customer personas, compare behaviors across markets, or get deep insights into your target audience, especially if you're working across different countries or demographics.
6. Attest
Attest is another survey-based market research platform that allows you to ask direct questions and get structured, self-reported data from your chosen audience. In the broader market research stack, Attest can fill the gap left by search and social tools—it gives you statistically valid answers to “why” and “how many,” with total control over the sample.
Pros
Global reach with local targeting (language, location, demographics)
Flat pricing across markets—great for international research
Combines qualitative and quantitative formats
Intuitive UI and fast results with real-time dashboards
Cons
Based on self-reported data, which can be biased
Not real-time—responses take hours to days
May be too expensive for basic use cases compared to lightweight survey tools
Price
Usage-based model subscription model—exact pricing available on contact.
Who should use Attest?
Use Attest if you need direct survey responses from specific audiences, say if you're testing messaging, measuring market readiness, validating positioning, or segmenting consumers. Especially useful when search or social data raises a question you want to answer with certainty.
Conclusion
As you can see, each data source gives you a different window into the market—and the best insights come from knowing when to look through which one.
Search data shows what people want. It’s massive, unbiased, and real-time—ideal for spotting trends and forecasting demand.
Social and media data shows what people say. It’s perfect for tracking sentiment, understanding narratives, and seeing how opinions evolve in the wild.
Survey data shows what people report. It gives you structure and depth, helping you validate ideas and deeply understand specific audiences.
The smartest strategies combine all three: use search to detect a signal, social to understand the conversation, and surveys to pressure-test your assumptions.
Hopefully, this breakdown helped you find the right tools for your market research goals—and maybe even sparked a few ideas along the way.
FAQ
What is the best market research tool?
Glimpse is the best market research tool for marketers, researchers, and strategists that want to stay ahead of the curve and take full advantage of search data for market research.