As you can tell from the entirely un-sexy title, this is one for the analytics nerds.

Google Insights provides the interesting capability of viewing the relative search volume of keywords mapped to a geography. So for instance, Andrew Chen has used the tool to identify websites used by early adopters. This is handy both directly for web strategy, as well as indirectly as a proxy for spread of usage.

One feature that’s missing though is a quantitative measure of spread. I want to know, for instance, the degree of usage of TechCrunch relative to the NYT. Or of my new startup compared to established competitors. Or of a US brand compared to a competing European brand. And I want it in numbers.

For this, you need to take the CSV dump from Google Insights and take the standard deviation of the values for the “top regions for [keyword]” with some adjustments due to the dorky way that Google gives you data.

Or if you don’t want to do that, you could just plug your CSV files into the geographic spread calculator that I threw together this morning.

Here are some fun queries I prepared earlier:

• Obama vs McCain internationally
• Obama vs McCain in the US
• Top social networks
• Australian print newspapers
• “Olympic swimming” vs “South Ossetia”

Have fun, and let me know if you come up with anything interesting!