Google Trends is a powerful and free tool provided by Google to help users understand search trends. You can check trending searches by regions, languages and time period. THE Google Trends can be used for curiosity purposes and also for content marketing purposes.
This article will give you an overview of how Google Trends works, as well as some tips on how to get the most out of the tool.
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What is Google Trends?
Google Trends is an internet tool that helps users visualize and discover trends in people's search behavior within the tools. Google Search, Google News, Google Images, Google Shopping e YouTube.
It is an extremely useful tool for evaluating the success of the SEO strategy of a company. It not only allows users to see which topics and queries have been popular in searches, but it also gives access to data containing how often specific searches were done over a certain period of time, which you can specify in filters.
The data can then be visualized by Google, producing a trend chart topic searched over the selected time, allowing you to efficiently analyze the results.
The graph of Search Volume Index can be used to view queries from up to 5 different searches at the same time, allowing you to perform comparative research and analysis.
Google Trends is pretty straightforward, but there are some metrics that are important to understand.
How Google Trends works
Google Trends analyzes search data and takes a sample based on a time period you set. You can set a time period from 2004 to the latest hour. You can also set a custom time period if you're interested in seeing surveys at a specific time.
But it's important to emphasize that Google Trends shows relative data, not quantitative data. This means that the graph shows the popularity of the search term, rather than how many searches were done.
The data comprises how many of the total searches done over a period of time. You can also compare up to five search terms different.
Since Trends shows a normalized sum of search queries sampled from all search queries across the Google network, the numbers and trend lines in the graph show popularity on a scale rather than specific search volume.
So the closer the trend is to 100, the more popular it is, and the closer it is to 0, the less popular the search term.
You can also filter your data to see more specific results. The filters available on Trends include:
- Time: Current and custom time periods;
- Region: Country, State, Province and other geographic regions;
- Categories world cups: Current categories like Arts and Entertainment, or All at once;
- Research na Web, Image Search, News Search, Search on YouTube ou Google Shopping.
When it comes to Google search trends, you can find the what, when and where very easily!
Rising trends and breakout topics
Sometimes there are especially popular search queries that grow rapidly in a relatively short period of time. These queries are considered "Rising".
in the table "Related Searches", top search queries related to "iPhone" are labeled "iPhone message". This means that the query has increased by at least 2.700% during the selected time period, which is a very significant increase.
Using Google Trends for Market Research
With a basic understanding of how Google Trends works, you can apply that knowledge to using Trends to do market research and search engine optimization (SEO).
Three factors to keep in mind when using Google Trends for business marketing:
- Geography - Where are people looking?
- Seasonality - When are people looking?
- Relevance - What are people looking for and on what platform?
Geography
Comparing different search queries can share insights into which terms are searched for more than others. For example, is the search term "iPhone" more popular than "Samsung Galaxy"? Is the popularity of a search the same on web search and Google Shopping? Where in Spain is the term "iPhone" most searched?
You might be surprised to find that in the last year, people searched more for the term "iPhone" in Maranhão than in Rio Grande do Sul. If you have a store that sells iPhones, you could be more successful advertising the product in the state of Maranhão in 2021.
Seasonality
Many search terms can be affected by seasonality. How many people are searching for the term "Carnival" in February or November?
A hotel owner in Serra Gaúcha, for example, may want to know the best time to advertise their services online. Based on Google trends, he can conclude that in winter an ad involving the city name "Gramado" could be more successful.
Seasonality can help you plan advertising campaigns knowing when to start increasing your digital marketing investment.
Relevance
There could be thousands of people looking for your product or service, but they aren't finding you online because your company's website only talks about iPhone, while people search for other smartphones, for example. We're talking about the same type of product, but one term may be more popular than the other.
Keep in mind that the platform people are using to search can also change the popularity of a query. You may find that more people are using a specific term in a web search compared to an image search or google shopping.
Using Google Trends for Keyword Research
When you compare keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner and the Google Trends, the first shows search volume, while the second shows searches relative to all Google search queries.
The benefits of using Google Trends is that you can see trending search queries by popularity in near real-time. For a quick comparison of keyword popularity, let's compare "a president" with "a presidenta".
You may not know that there are two correct ways to refer to a female president in the singular. But, it seems that "the president" is the winner of the popular vote rather than "a presidenta".
Note: Beware of misleading data spikes. Hot topics can skyrocket in a matter of hours, but looking at the big picture will reveal how long the popularity actually lasted.
For example, in the United States, when Disney Plus launched, it passed to Netflix in a few days. But two months later, Disney Plus was once again below Netflix in search volume.
This demonstrates how quickly search trends can rise and fall.
If you need a quick comparison of multiple phrases during your keyword research process, no tool beats Trends. If you need to know which question is most commonly asked, or which phrase is most common, (eg: "pool maintenance" vs. "pool cleaning") Google Trends can provide you with the answer you are using the right keyword phrases.
Using the three mentioned factors, seasonality, relevance and geography, you can identify which phrases to use at the right time. You can create an editorial calendar based on the flow of search behavior throughout the year.
