Using Google Trends you can gain an insight into broad search patterns, like your own personal Google Zeitgeist.

Although Google trends can't provide up-to-the-minute trends or predict the future (it takes data from two years worth of searches) you can use it as a general popularity indicator. There is also an extra feature that shows news stories that  are linked to the topic you are searching.

The ability to compare searches is also useful. For instance I wanted to find out who has been searching for "search engine optimisation" or "search engine optimization" and compare them.

The graph that appears alongside the results shows me peaks and troughs of searches.

The breakdown of results is really interesting, when I was researching "search engine optimisation" v "search engine optimization" I found that the top city is West Lothian who use the "s" spelling and then when I click into "Regions" I can see that "India" uses the "z" spelling. So from our business perspective the tool can be used to research the global market.

If you would like more advice on using Google Trends as an online marketing tool then contact us to find out more about our Search Engine Optimisation solutions.