Google Trends Background
Google Trends is a keyword research tool that shows you keyword traffic over time in various regions and languages. The service was augmented by the addition of Google Insights for Search, which added a visual component to view keyword performance in countries, states, provinces, etc in the form of maps. Google Trends can be used to perform some basic research to inform your SEO (search engine optimization) and pay-per-click (PPC) strategies.
Google Trends Features
Google Trends pulls its data from its own searches. While it’s not as robust as Ubersuggest or SEMrush, it does provide you indispensable information using an intuitive interface.
Region
Google Trends lets you see how your keyword is performing in different countries around the world. You can also search by subregions as well. That means, for example, that you can look at keyword performance in America and its states.
Time Span
You can look at your results over various periods of time, ranging from keyword performance within the hour to keyword performance from now all the way back to 2004.
Categories
You can see how your term does in different categories, such as art and entertainment or autos and vehicles.
Web Search
You can see how your keyword performs on different APIs. They include: Google search, image search, news search, Google shopping, and Youtube search.
Comparing
You can compare one keyword to multiple others to compare their traffic over time.
Related Topics
Topics, or keywords, are what digital marketers search for so they can create more effective SEO or PPC campaigns. Using this data, an SEO or PPC media agency can craft copy that’s more attuned with that search engine algorithms consider to be high quality results.
Related Queries
These are terms that people who searched for your term also searched for. They can be arranged by how they place in the top 100 most frequently searched terms. You can also arrange this data based on whether the term is now getting searched for more often. Terms that have made great gains are called “breakout”.
Link
You can create a link to the various pieces of data Google Trends provides you with.
Download
You can download your work as a CSV file, which allows you to view your work with programs that build tables. This includes Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets
Embedding
Google Trends provides you with a link to embed your data using a high quality visualization
How Google Trends is Used
Google Trends is very easy to use. Just type in the term or topic you want to explore, and then you’ll get your results displayed using an intuitive interface. You can also add terms to compare your search results to just by adding them to the box marked “compare”.
Google Trends Use Cases
Content Inspiration: By studying the related queries and focusing on those that are breakouts, you can be inspired to create new content that speaks to what people are clamoring for in the moment.
Comparing Topics: Being able to compare topics quickly can have many useful applications. When it comes to picking a title for your article, for example, you can see if people are more like to search for, “tips”, “tricks”, or, “hacks” and make your decision based on which term has the highest traffic.
Compelling Visuals: Google Trends isn’t complicated by an abundance of resources. It shows you how well your queries are performing over time or in different reasons, allowing for easy to interpret visualizations. These can be very useful for presentations because they’re so easy to read.
Google Trends Pricing
Google Trends is free!
Bottom Line on Google Trends
Google Trends may not be the most robust keyword research tool, so it won’t be relied on by an SEO agency or PPC media agency. But you don’t always need the most robust research tool! In fact, an over abundance of options can sometimes lead to complications. That’s why Google Trends is ideal for simple tasks like picking the right keyword for a title, inspiring ideas for content, or for creating visualizations for presentations.
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