Google Trends is a tool provided by Google that offers a plethora of valuable information for the purposes of search engine optimization (SEO) and content creation.
From real-time search trends to related queries and category insights, Google Trends provides marketers with numerous opportunities to refine their strategies and optimize their performance.
This article will serve as a comprehensive guide to Google Trends, covering all the necessary information to effectively utilize it for SEO and content marketing.
You will gain an understanding of what Google Trends is, how it differs from other keyword tools, and the various methods you can employ to maximize its potential. By doing so, you will be able to increase your website traffic and gain a competitive advantage.
Let us commence.
What Is Google Trends?
Google Trends is a tool designed for the analysis of search queries, displaying search trends over a specified period of time in the form of a graph.
It allows users to compare up to five keyword search terms and refine the results based on geographic location, topic, time period, and search surface (such as images, news, shopping, and videos).
There are four customizable options available to tailor the keyword data:
- Geographic location (by individual country or worldwide).
- Topic categories (25 categories plus all categories simultaneously).
- Four different search surfaces (image, news, shopping, YouTube).
- Time.
Time-Based Data
Keyword search trends can further be segmented by the following eight time settings:
- The past hour.
- Past four hours.
- Past day.
- Past seven days.
- Past 30 days.
- Past 90 days.
- Past five years.
- 2004 – present.
How Is Google Trends Data Different From Keyword Search Volumes?
Google Trends differs from third-party keyword research tools in that it does not provide keyword search volume data. Instead, it presents the number of search queries in percentages on a scale ranging from 0 to 100.
On the other hand, third-party paid SEO tools do offer estimates of keyword volumes. However, these estimates are based on data purchased from other providers and are not as reliable.
Typically, third-party reporting tools acquire data from software companies that collect anonymous search data from their users. They then generate statistical estimates using this data.
In contrast, Google Trends obtains its data from a sample of Google’s actual search data, making it the most accurate source of keyword search data available. The reason for using sampling is that the actual volume of data is in the billions, making it impractical to process in its entirety.
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However, Google reassures that the sampling is representative of actual search volume.
Google explains:
“While only a sample of Google searches are used in Google Trends, this is sufficient because we handle billions of searches per day.
Providing access to the entire data set would be too large to process quickly.
By sampling data, we can look at a dataset representative of all Google searches, while finding insights that can be processed within minutes of an event happening in the real world.”
Although Google Trends doesn’t provide keyword volume data, the tool does provide keyword volume data expressed as a percentage, with 100% representing the highest amount of traffic for the given period of time.
That percentage data can be compared with other keywords with known search volumes.
Known search volumes can be obtained by selecting keyword phrases from Google’s trending searches report, which can itself be tuned to specific geographic areas.
Thus, comparing keywords from the trending searches report against those with unknown search volumes will show an accurate representation of actual keyword volume.
How Do I Find Trending Items On Google Trends?
There are two ways to identify trending searches: through Google’s “trending now” webpage and through the Google Trends Explore tool.
Trending Now
Trending now shows the top twenty daily search trends for the current day.
