Google Trends Review
by Paul Flyer
Google just recently launched a new tool from their labs called Google Trends.
Users enter multiple search terms and Google Trends displays various trend graphs about those terms.
It is striking to notice that there are no numbers, other than a year range, associated with any of the data. No quantative analysis can take place. Google Trends solely displays a line graph that lets users simply see less versus more kinds of relationships between terms.
It is, in many ways, a simple keyword analysis tool that lets users see if one search term is used more than another.
Terms are entered into the search box separated by commas. For this example, pretend we are a clothing company interested in whether more people search for the terms “pants”, “jeans”, or “trousers”.
Enter “pants,jeans,trousers” into the search box and click “Search Trends”.
The first graph displayed is split into two parts. Lines above the year marker show search volume. This represents how often searchers use that term to search. Lines below the year marker show News Reference volume. This is how often those terms are used in news articles. Each term is color coded.
In our example, it is easy to see that both “jeans” and “pants” are searched for substantially more than “trousers”. “jeans” also has a comfortable distance between itself and pants.
Under News Reference volume, it seems both jeans and pants are used just as regularly, while trousers is not used as much.
Below this line graph is a series of three bar graphs that break down the search volume by city, region and language.
Remember, this data only shows a general trend. No numbers are associated with the graph so users dont know if terms are being search for 10,000 times a day or 10 times a month. This tool should only be used to do initial kinds of keyword analysis.
Google itself states:
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. Please keep this in mind when using it.
In our example, our pretend clothing could determine the following:
- Jeans and Pants are terms that deserve further research
- While trousers does not perform well overall, there is a substantial number of people in the United Kingdom that use the term. Marketing efforts in this region of the world should still consider using this term.
Further research would include doing quantitative analysis: How many searches per month? Are these terms worth focusing on? How difficult would it be to rank well using these terms? Etc.
It will be interesting to see how Google Trends develops. While everyone would want to see some concrete numbers associated with those graphs, I do not forsee Google ever doing anything like that. Google Trends is a good tool for beginners to begin to understand the relationships between “good” search terms and “bad” search terms. The tool does not give a complete picture of term use but could definitely be a small part of one’s keyword analysis arsenal.
[tags]Google, Google Trends, keywords[/tags]
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