Google Trends is a hot new site from google that lets you “See what the world is searching for”. As a Trend Hunter, I can tell you that this rocks! “Google Trends aims to provide insights into broad search patterns. It is based upon just a portion of our searches, and several approximations are used when computing your results.”
How to Use Google Trends:
- If you enter a word into the Google Trends search box, you’ll see the Trend Search Volume over time,
- Enter a comma between two words to compare them over time (e.g. “skiing, surfing” compares skiing vs. surfing)
- Browse which cities in the world are most popular for your result
- Compare the search term by language
- The front page shows top fun results, which can be very insightful
Some Fun Searches:
new years, easter, halloween, thanksgiving, christmas (see the impact of timing)
good, evil (which one wins?)
flu (when do people get sick? which cities are sick?)
summer camps (when do people send the kids away)
red, blue, yellow, green (do people care about YOUR favorite color?)
Google Trends is pretty cool. I think I’ll try and feature random entries from Google Trends as frequently as possible. Google has a wealth of information and it’s pretty cool to see them giving the public access.