Keeping Up with Google Trends

There is very little information known to most of the marketers about Google Trends. The truth is that most of the marketers are not even aware of how to use Google Trends to their benefit.

But Google Trends is not some ordinary marketing tool, and if used wisely it can give a real boost to all your marketing efforts.

So, what exactly is Google Trends?

Google Trends is a free service that shows how often a keyword is entered relative to the total search-volume across various regions of the world, and in various languages. With Google Trends you can compare how the world is interested in your favorite topics. For example, if you are interested in top car models, enter up to 5 of your favorite models and see how they have been searched on Google over time. Not only search, but Trends shows how often those search terms have appeared in Google News and in different geographic areas. The best part is that the information in trends is updated daily based on the search behavior of users around the globe.

The fact that you can checkout trends in different areas and in languages, makes it a very important tool for people who are into local search marketing.

How does Google Trend work?

Google Trends works by analyzing a portion of Google’s web searches. When you type in a keyword in search box, it calculates how many searches were made for that keyword and then it compares it to the total number of searches made over a period of time.

Below is an example of a search that I made for BMW cars on Google Trends.

 

The graph shows the trend over a span of 7 years starting from 2004.

Notice, the news results that are coming on the right, they are the results about the news articles that mention BMW cars. In the bottom, you can see the trends in various regions, cities and languages, which you can use to tweak your local internet marketing strategies.

This is just a result of 1 keyword, if you key in 5 keywords, you can compare the trends and thus decide which keyword is more suitable to target. For example, if you want to find compare different types of cars, then you should type bmw, mercedes, jaguar in Google Trends search bar. If you wish to exclude some words from search then you can use the minus sign and if you wish to search in a particular order then use quotation marks.

Google Trends is a very powerful tool for today’s marketers. Make sure you use them in your marketing strategy.