Google Trends is a service that launched in May 2006 that allows you to see how popular search terms have been over time on Google. You can also see how popular web sites are, along with related demographic information as estimated by Google. Google Hot Trends is a subsection of Google Trends launched in May 2007 that shows the “hottest” searches at Google on an hourly basis.

Google Trends Gets New Monthly Top Charts & Trending Topics Displayed In Bold Color Visualizations

May 22, 2013 at 2:56pm ET by Amy Gesenhues

Google Trends has started a new monthly "spirit of the times" Top Charts feature with more than 40 categories of Top 10 lists that include people, places and things ranked by search interest. According to today's post from Google's Official Blog, the Top Charts go back to 2004 and will continue to be updated monthly. You can find the Top Charts link from the Google Trends homepage on the left-hand side of the site. While Google states that the Top Charts include their most accurate search volume rankings, they note that no algorithm is perfect and anomalies in the data may be found on rare [...]

Google’s April Fools’ Day 2013 Joke-A-Thon: YouTube Shutdown, Google Nose & More

Mar 31, 2013 at 3:17pm ET by Matt McGee

April Fool's Day is pretty much like a national ... err, international holiday for everyone that works for Google. It seems that nobody else on the Web takes the tradition of pranks and jokes as seriously as Google does -- just see our coverage from the last few April Fool's Days for proof: Google's Gags Go Worldwide For April Fool's Day 2012 It's Over: Google Has Already Won April Fools Day 2011 Google Books, Google Maps Get 3D View – But Only For April Fool's Day April Fools' Day 2009: Google CADIE & More From Search Industry It may still be March 31st for me, and maybe [...]

Google Trends Now Shows YouTube Searches

Mar 20, 2013 at 1:19pm ET by Barry Schwartz

Google announced on Google+ that they have expanded Google Trends to add YouTube search support. Now you can use Google Trends to see what searches are trending and spiking across the world from within YouTube search. The trend data for YouTube goes back to 2008. To use this, go to Google Trends and search for something. Then on the left-hand panel under "Limit to," choose "YouTube" to restrict the data to just YouTube searches. Here is a picture: For more details, see the YouTube Blog. [...]

Panic Flu Searches May Have Tricked Google Flu Trends Into Thinking Things Were Worse

Feb 13, 2013 at 3:00pm ET by Greg Finn

Google Flu Trends has been a critical tool for many trying to gauge the severity of influenza since it's launch in 2008. Each year, Google Flu Trends attempts to show flu prevalence based off of flu-related Google search queries. Flu Trends has been quite accurate throughout its history... until this year. Nature.com reports that Google Flu Trends overshot the percent of the U.S. population with influenza-like illness by nearly double what the CDC reported. But why? Well, for starters, the flu hit early this year. The peak of the flu outbreak occurred late December, something that is [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search | Google | Google: Trends

Green Ribbon, Minimum Wage, Climate Changes: Google Searches For The State Of The Union

Feb 13, 2013 at 9:32am ET by Barry Schwartz

Last night, President Obama gave his State of the Union address. During his address, Google was plotting how his speech impacted the types of search queries done on Google last night. Google was sharing statistics and charts throughout the night on their Google Politics Google+ page. Here are some of the interesting trends we saw last night on Google due to the State of the Union address. During the first 15 minutes of the speech, the top rising terms on Google were Green Ribbon, Eliot Engel, Supreme Court Justices, and Steven Chu. There was a 950% spike in interest on search terms [...]

Searching for The Super Bowl Start Time: 2013 Edition

Feb 3, 2013 at 1:59pm ET by Vanessa Fox

Surely every organization managing an event site knows at this point that people want to know what time things start. And that those potential viewers are likely to turn to Google to find out. This year, Google just provides the answer right at the top of the page: February 3rd at 3:30 pacific. Just as we saw last year, the NFL understands what their target audience is looking for and has built a page that provides exactly what they need (that ranks first in the search results), as well as invites them to tour the rest of the site (which gives the NFL the page views they need - win/win!) [...]

12 Top Search Trends To Kick Off 12/12/12 Google Zeitgeist

Dec 12, 2012 at 8:00am ET by Elisabeth Osmeloski

Don't worry, Google's year in review for 2012 isn't that predictable for the once in a lifetime calendar event. On the official Google 2012 Zeitgeist website, you'll find their biggest list ever published, with a total of 838 lists from 55 countries, covering 1.2 trillion searches done worldwide. Digging in deeper, Google has divided the massive data set into two major buckets: Trending Searches: What was hot in 2012? The "trending" queries are the searches that had the highest amount of traffic over a sustained period in 2012 as compared to 2011. Most Searched: What topped Google’s [...]

Can Search Queries And Social Data Predict The Presidential Election Outcome?

Nov 6, 2012 at 6:30pm ET by Greg Sterling

By the time this election is over more than $2.6 billion will have been spent by the two US presidential candidates on political advertising. I've also seen some estimates that say total political advertising this election cycle will top $6 billion. Yet, remarkably, The Atlantic points to a Google Trends report showing a huge November spike for the query "Who's running for president?" "Who's Running for President?" If you compare "Obama" to "Romney," Google Trends reflects that Obama comes out just ahead of Romney, the same way many believe this election will turn out later this evening. [...]

Google Merges Insights For Search With Google Trends

Sep 27, 2012 at 1:47pm ET by Matt McGee

Google has merged two of its popular search/keyword research tools. Google Insights for Search has been absorbed by Google Trends; the combined tool keeps the Google Trends name and exists at the www.google.com/trends address, too. If you try to access the Insights for Search address (www.google.com/insights/search), Google redirects you to the new Google Trends. When Google launched Insights for Search in 2008, I remember one of the first really helpful uses that I had for it was to help a client figure out if he should be using the term "lawyer" or "attorney" more frequently. As I use [...]

Google Updates “Hot Searches” With Images & Stories

Jun 12, 2012 at 12:11pm ET by Barry Schwartz

Google has announced an update to Hot Searches, formerly known as Google Hot Trends. The update gives the page a more magazine look with images from news papers, news stories, related searches, and more. But it appears to remove the ability to search for hot trends by date. Here is a close up of what the top trending search concept is right now, Apple: As you can see, the image used is from the New York Times coverage of the WWDC Keynote given by Apple's CEO. There are also news stories from news sources and related searches that make this a trending search concept. In addition, it s [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search | Google: Trends | Google: Web Search | Top News

Google Zeitgeist 2011: Rebecca Black, Lego Alien & Steve Jobs

Dec 15, 2011 at 9:35am ET by Barry Schwartz

Google released the Google Zeitgeist 2011 today. Google made several lists this year and even broke them down by country. You can play with the interactive lists at googlezeitgeist.com. Those in the picture above are included in the "fastest rising searches" category, including Rebecca Black, Google+, Ryan Dunn, Casey Anthony, Battlefield 3, iPhone 5, Adele, 東京電力, Steve Jobs and iPad 2. Google summed up the year also in this video: Here is a partial text based list: Fastest-Rising Toys 1. Lego Alien Conquest 2. Unova Pokedex 3. Fluttershy Fastest-Rising Costu [...]

Steve Jobs Searches Spiked At Google

Oct 6, 2011 at 3:00pm ET by Danny Sullivan

It's as you would have expected -- searches for Steve Jobs skyrocketed at Google, after news of his death spread. Oddly, Google Trends -- which shows spiking search queries -- failed to show this activity until hours later. Google, Yahoo Didn't Show Spike Yesterday, I had some people ask me why Steve Jobs wasn't showing on Google Trends. This is how things looked at 7:15pm PT yesterday, about 2 1/2 hours after the news that Steve Jobs had died broke: As you can see, "steve jobs" wasn't in the top trending searches. There was nothing related at all. Going to the full list: You can see t [...]

Google Search Globe: See Searches Happening Visually Around The World

May 5, 2011 at 12:53pm ET by Barry Schwartz

Google announced a neat new visual display of Google's search volume by search query language. The tool is named the Google Search Globe. Search Globe plots different colored bars protruding from the globe. Each color represents a different language, and you'd see a nice diverse set of colors (i.e. languages) over places like Europe and parts of Asia. Here is a video of how it works: [youtube width="600" height="480"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpOlpZBZU-A[/youtube] The Google Data Arts Team put this together to help Internet accessibility throughout the world by geographic ar [...]

Internet Lowlifes Already Targeting Japan Quake Search Results

Mar 11, 2011 at 1:58pm ET by Matt McGee

With much of the world's focus on the tragic earthquake in Japan, Internet security watchers are warning about dangerous web pages showing up in some quake-related search results. Trend Micro reported earlier this morning that malware sites had started targeting search terms shortly after the quake hit. As shown in the image above, Trend Micro found several sites offering fake anti-virus software in the search results for the term, "most recent earthquake in Japan." Thanks to Trend Micro's post and related coverage, the first page of Google's results for that phrase now includes several [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search | Google: Trends | Legal: Security

Google Asks: Can Search Trends Predict The Oscars?

Feb 15, 2011 at 7:38pm ET by Matt McGee

Search activity on Bing didn't help predict the Grammy winners this year; Lady Gaga was the subject of about a zillion more searches than Album of the Year winner, The Arcade Fire. Klout scores also couldn't predict the Grammy Award winners. In fact, social media as a whole failed to tell us who the winners would be in advance. But despite all that, Google is asking if search trends can predict the Oscar winners, and it's created a mini-site called Oscar Search Trends to let us see who's winning the search activity race. As of this moment, Black Swan would be the favorite for Best Pi [...]

Scoring the 2011 Super Bowl Commercials For Search Visibility and Visitor Engagement

Feb 7, 2011 at 3:04am ET by Vanessa Fox

Every year, advertisers pay millions to air commercials during the Super Bowl. (The price this year is around three million dollars for a thirty second slot.) Advertisers are looking not only for conversions (sure, Hyundia would love for you to run out and buy that new Elantra tomorrow) but also heightened awareness and engagement. The more you engage with a brand and have a positive association with it, the more likely you'll buy that brand in the future, so conventional wisdom goes. Why should advertisers care about showing up in search results? More and more, we're using the internet and [...]

What Time Does the 2011 Super Bowl Start? A (Continuing) Lesson in Search Visibility

Feb 5, 2011 at 11:44pm ET by Vanessa Fox

(For those wondering what time the game really does start, the 2011 Super Bowl between the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers kicks off on Fox at around 6:30pm ET.) Before the Super Bowl in both 2009 and 2010, I checked out the search engine results for the Super Bowl start time. In 2009, the results were abysmal. No one was taking advantage of the clear searcher interest. One could argue that the search engines themselves did a poor job at surfacing relevant results but that argument assumes relevant results existed. The official sites were virtually uncrawlable. In 2010, the se [...]

Google Releases Zeitgeist 2010: Justin Bieber To Chatroulette & iPad To Haiti

Dec 9, 2010 at 1:16pm ET by Barry Schwartz

Google has announced their Zeitgeist, the popular and fastest rising queries from 2010. Google published it over here and for the first time has included an "interactive HTML5 data visualizations" to page in order for you to see how hot a particular query was across the globe. Here is a look at the Top Global Events including World Cup, Olympics, and the Haiti Earthquake: Here is the list: Fastest Rising 1. chatroulette 2. ipad 3. justin bieber 4. nicki minaj 5. friv 6. myxer 7. katy perry 8. twitter 9. gamezer 10. facebook Fastest Falling 1. swine flu 2. [...]

The Google Beat: Google Starts Vlogging About Hot Search Topics

Aug 27, 2010 at 5:29pm ET by Matt McGee

Google has launched a new videoblog series that will highlight "some of the hottest searches" on Google's U.S. search engine. It's called The Google Beat, and the first weekly video was published this morning. Here's how Google explains it: Using data from Google Trends, Google Insights for Search and some additional tools, the Google Beat will give you a snapshot of some of the topics that prompted people to turn to the web over the past week. A weekly video is small potatoes to what Yahoo's been doing for a long time now. Its Yahoo Buzz Blog posts several articles per day looking at da [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search | Google: Trends | Google: Web Search

Study Calls Google ‘King Of Malware’

Jul 30, 2010 at 3:39pm ET by Matt McGee

Google has twice as much malware in its search results as Yahoo, Bing, and Twitter combined. That's one of the findings in the Barracuda Labs 2010 Midyear Security Report, which will be presented tomorrow at the DEFCON 18 hacking conference tomorrow in Las Vegas. Barracuda Labs says it studied the four search engines for about two months and reviewed more than 25,000 trending topics and almost 5.5 million search results. The results aren't good for Google: Overall, Google takes the crown for malware distribution – turning up more than twice the amount of malware as Bing, Twitter and Ya [...]

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