The Levitan Insight Toolkit

New strategic tools I check out every month. Here’s what I actually reach for.

I’ve been using, building, and sharing how to be an insight genius for years. Here is the latest.

1. Google Trends. You probably know it. Still the fastest read on what’s hot and what’s not in Google’s search universe. Please use this for marketing. Search it!
2. Think with Google. A free repository of Google’s own data and research. They know things.
3. Google Alerts. Keep up with news on a client or a category while you sleep.
4. Google Keyword Planner. Yes, more Google. It draws on historical search data to estimate what a set of keywords might do for your spend.
5. AnswerThePublic. A visual listening tool that shows you the actual questions your consumers are typing into Google. Add this to Google Trends.
6. Exploding Topics. Exactly what it sounds like…. a way to spot the next big thing before your competitor does.
7. Quora. Where people ask what they actually want to know. All answers, no filter.
8. Pew Research Center. How Americans(and globals) live, think, and vote — nonpartisan and rigorous. I am using it massively for my next 60+ book.
9. Statista. Statistics and market research data. The paywall is real, but the free previews often answer the question.
10. vidIQ. Got a YouTube channel? It helps creators find the topics and keywords worth chasing.
11. F5Bot. Ever wonder what the world is saying about you or your company? F5Bot emails you the second your name hits Reddit or Hacker News… where people say what they think, not what they’ll say to your face. Free. (This slot used to belong to Social Mention. It died. This is better.)
12. BuzzSumo. Indexes billions of articles. Type a keyword, see what got shared and what got ignored. The internet’s applause meter.
13. Brandwatch. Qualitative social listening: not how many times a keyword appeared, but what people think and why. (Remesh is the newer play if you want AI-moderated focus groups at scale.)
14. SurveyMonkey and Typeform. Collect your very own market research data. Clients dig polls YES!!!! Even man-on-the-street interviews.
15. Ubersuggest. Neil Patel’s tool for competitive keywords and search trends. Treat it as a paid tool that occasionally lets you in for free.
16. Add filetype:pdf to any Google search. You’ll skip the blog slop and land on the higher-level thinking: academic papers, real reports, actual rigor. A technique, not a product, which means it’ll still work when every tool on this list is dead.
17. Gartner. Insights and reports. Expensive, corporate, and right often enough to matter. But this instead of the expensive dinner you will forget..
18. AI research assistants — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity. The twenty hours of desk research that used to bill out now takes an afternoon. Use Perplexity when you need sources you can cite; use the others to pressure-test a strategy at 11 p.m. when your planners are asleep. They don’t replace the judgment. They kill the grunt work. You know this. So, just saying.

GO!