How to use Google Trends: An Introduction for your Business

What is Google Trends?

If you have never heard of, or used Google Trends before then you are in for a treat! Google Trends is a tool that allows you to compare the popularity of search terms and trends. With a number of different features, it allows you to gain an understanding of the hottest search trends of the moment along with those developing in popularity over time.

How to use Google Trends

Well, the good news it Google Trends is free! It’s open for anyone to use, whenever you like. What can you do with Google Trends? The list of potential uses for Google Trends is endless, but here is a

quick step by step guide to using Google Trends to benefit your business.

What can I use Google Trends for?

Understanding your audience

As the most popular search engine, Google has become more of an institution than a search engine. This allows their search data to be incredibly indicative of public opinion and interests. You can use this to your advantage by understanding public opinion related to your industry.

If I were using Google Trends for Hallam Internet I would like to know how the perception of our industry has changed over time and where it lays now.

I would get myself on Google Trends and start with the basics. I would type some key phrases in the search box above that I think would be indicative of a difference in opinion and understanding of our industry like so…

You will now be greeted with a graph which will show you the search trends over time for these phrases compared to each other. These will automatically default to Worldwide but if you are targetting a specific country or area, you may want to tailor your graph to that area. To do this navigate down to the Regional Interest panel and select your preferred Region or City:

You will now be left with a graph showing you the popularity of certain terms from searches in your selected area. Here is mine below:

From this graph I can tell how trends have been changing when social media was less popular than email marketing, to its huge surge in popularity post-2009. It tells me that, in general Social Media, SEO and Paid Search services may be more popular than email marketing, even more so than ever before.

Using Google Trends to understand your competitors

You can also use Google Trends to monitor your competitors’, as well as your own popularity. Google Trends’ “News Headlines” feature allows you to monitor popularity in conjunction with bad (and good) news stories.

At a loss of who to search for, I have exposed my tennis-loving ways but this explains my point exactly. If you searched for a competitor and their graph looked a little something like this one, then you might be intrigued about how they’ve managed to peak in popularity. By selecting the News Headlines box you should be able to learn very quickly why these peaks have formed, just hover over the letters for a little description. For example:

Here we see that Andy Murray losing to Federer caused a huge surge in popularity. We only have to click to see the article for more detail to find out that this was Murrary’s first Wimbledon final. So what caused the huge peak the next year…

Well, I’m glad that the public agrees that this was a very exciting time. In fact, Andy Murray winning Wimbledon correlated with the most interest from Scotland in Wimbledon in the last 10 years, coincidence? I think not.

 

This goes to show how useful this tool can be for finding when you or your competitors have been particularly popular, why they have been and what affect this may have had.

Content Ideas from Google Trends

We all know now that great, relevant and popular content is key to digital marketing and SEO success. The key to popular content is relevance and timing. Searching around Google Trends is a great way to understand what people are talking about, what they are interested in and more importantly what kind of content they are going to enjoy and when they will enjoy it most. Your competitiors’ content that has gone viral or correlated with a surge in popularity may be linked to or mentioned in the News Headlines section – so keep an eye on this!

Lastly, you can use Google Trends for a bit of fun or just to confirm some of your suspicions about trends in your industry. Of course Google Trends has a lot to offer – a lot more than can be summarised in one blog post!

Is there anything you use Google Trends for, or anything you would like to know about it? Just leave a comment and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible!

Happy Trend-ing.