Posted by Do you know about Google Trends? It is an awesome part of the Google empire. Enter a search term, or several, and track how often they have been searched for in Google over many years, and compare them to each other — and you can specify locations (USA? UK? India? Globally?) and time ranges. It is a really interesting insight into how popular various things actually are (as opposed to what a company claims), and also where in the world these search terms are most popular. OK, maybe we’re a bit weird (only a bit?!) but we find it fascinating, and encouraging.
Cos, check this out:
(These are all results over the past 5 years, and worldwide.)
Some things to note:
We know that not everyone uses Google (we are partial to DuckDuckGo, for instance, as they don’t track you), but most internet searches use Google (reference).
Google Trends doesn’t distinguish why a person is searching on a term — they may be looking for information on the term for a range of reasons, including looking for critical information.
Some terms may have multiple meanings (eg someone searching for “Avon” could be looking for a town name). So the more specific or ‘unique’ the term you enter, the better.
A ‘combined’ search term and topic search is broader (eg chose the Rodin + Fields: Multi-level marketing company or Topic option in the search box instead of Rodin + Fields: Search term option).
These trends are complex and these ‘search term interest’ graphs only present part of the story. But still … there’s a whole lot of interesting data out there! Make of it what you will.