Google trends – Compare what people are searching for..

Last Updated on December 5, 2019 by Christopher G Mendla

Google has a neat tool available called Google Trends.  You can put in a search term or terms and it will show you the historical trends for searches for that term. It will also highlight news articles pertaining to that term and when they appeared.

You can also put in multiple terms to compare seperated by commas.

It’s great for comparing the popularity of certain things. For example, try Atlantic City, Cape May, Wildwood as a search, you will see the relative popularity of each of these. You will also notice the seasonal trends.

In the example above which was taken in December 2019, you can make some inferences:

• Searches for ‘Atlantic City’ are more popular than searches for ‘Cape May’
• There is a seasonal variation in the search patterns with the most searches at the peak of the summer and the least around December

You could expand the timeline to see if that holds true over the years. ( Of course it will as these are shore communities. )

There are regional, city and language graphs showing where the searches originated for a particular term.

Subregion

This will show the popularity of a search term by state.

Subregion with queries

If you are doing SEO for a site, this can show you alternative keywords and phrases that you might want to consider targeting

Tips

• If you compare a couple of terms and one has a much higher or lower search frequency, you may have to retry without that term to see the trends more clearly for the remaining items.
• Don’t forget that many words have multiple meanings. For example, bush will not only get you searches for the President, but also for shrubs and trees.
• Terms with low volumes of searchs will probably not show up.

Some things to try

You can try some of these searches. Warning: this can get addictive.

• equinox, solstice – There is a definite pattern.
• lawn mower, snowblower – Does the season affect these searches? When do people start looking for information on snowblowers and lawn mowers?
• Federal election
• New years eve
• sunburn, frostbite
• Ruby on Rails, Python – If you are planning to go into programming or development, which platforms are the most popular? Is interest ascending, stable or descending.
• Within Temptation, Evanescence -Which band has more interest?
• Full moon, Blue moon – This will put the phrase “once in a blue moon” in perspective

Summary

It is a pretty neat tool. If you are a webmaster, it can help you understand the seasonal variations in searching patterns. If you are a programming student considering specializing in a language this can help you gauge the popularity of different languages. If you are selling goods or services, this can help you understand seasonal fluctuations and demographics.

And, best of all, it is free!