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Google Trends is my new best friend for SEO

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Google has just released a new service called Google Trends (I wonder how many hours it took for them to come up with that name). It is an amazing new search analysis tool that is perfect for targeted SEO.

Disappointingly it does not give a numerical value to the data, so you cannot assume the relationship between two different searches. However you can see the data from several search terms by seperating them with comas "term1, term2". Also note that you can isolate the trends to specific years, months or regions. The inital changes took quite some time to load but after the switch the results came very fast. As such I didn't waste time changing them much and left it set to "all years" and "USA" for this little test.

So time to put it to work. So as not to give away my own secret SEO plans to take over the world (hehehehe) I chose to discover the holy grail of geek questions, Blondes or Brunettes.

Much against my own personal beliefs (I married a brunette) google trends says more geeks search for blondes. Please note that you can drill down a little and based on cities.

Okay so back to an earlier question about numerical values. I understand the reasons why Google wouldn't make this data public. But it does mean that independant searches cannot be compared. Here is a test in point. "Blondes, Blonde" vs just "Blondes":

As you can see Google adjusts the graph to best present each search. This means that to compare data it must be in the same search result.

This is great news for targeted SEO. Lets say I wanted to present material to people interested in blondes. Well I can find out which areas of the world and locally that are interested in this type of material. I could also look at growth patterns based on previous years and try to predict if brunettes were gaining in popularity even if it was centeralized in one region of the world.

With 'search' being so deeply entrenched into peoples lives this could allow anyone to conduct their own polls and market research in ways that they could have never done before.


Comments

Disappointing

On May 12th, 2006 Darren McLaughlin (not verified) says:

The tool is lacking pretty badly, IMHO. Once you play with it for a few minutes, you realize that data in isolation is meaningless.

On several searches, the most popular language was "Tagalog". I'm sure the Tagalogians are a great group of people, but are they that popular?

This just in... blondes are more popular everywhere.

On May 12th, 2006 isaac says:

Australia and then France top the trends for international searches for 'blonde'! But USA has 4 of top 10 spots.

I do agree (as pointed out in my article and screenshots) that independant SERPs are completely useless when compared to each other. However, independant searches can be conducted 'in bulk' and then the appearant top '5' ran together.

Now I do have to admit that I did notice region specific slanting of results when comparing international searches on:
"Digital Signatures" vs "Electronic Signatures". But If you noticed in the screenshots, all of my searches were US specific, so I can get around data that is not important to me.

India has a huge spike in searches for "digital signatures" (something I plan to look into very soon and post later) and these slide the scale for the rest of the world. BUT that's not Googles fault, but rather an advantage. I don't want 'altered' data, I want exactly what I ask for as Google has presented.

This slant is relevant info because it does represent a trend.... a Google Trends I think. We just have to know how to interpret the results.

Thanks for the comment! Isaac

Tagalog

On May 12th, 2006 Steve (not verified) says:

I'm not sure what searched the above commenter made, but Tagalog searches were very flat and low compared to some of the major languages I looked for.

BTW, Tagalog is the primary language in the Philippines - however most people there are also well versed in English, which may account the disproportionately high number of searches you saw.... possibly due to people & companies looking to outsource and doing research online (then doing a search for 'tagalog' for more info as it's not a commonly known word in N America and other countries). ...

They have an inexpensive work force with good educations and speak English. I'm surprised there isn't even more outsourcing jobs going there than there already is. But as the cost of living and wages go up in the current top 5 (at least) outsourcing country of India, they may find themselves being "out bid" by the Philippines where minimum wage (iirc) is currently $5 U.S. per day.

I had a pen-pal from there...

On May 12th, 2006 isaac says:

Man that was a long time ago! Interesting comments on Out-sourcing in the Philippines. And I have a few notes above also.

Isaac

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