A simple tutorial on how to use a powerful, underrated tool: Google Trends

1. How To Use Google
TRENDS

2. https://www.google.com/trends/
Open Google Trends:1.

3. • Google Trends will automatically show you what’s trending online.

5. • You can tailor which field you’re interested in, so that Google will only
show you what’s trending in that field.

8. • You can also search for a particular term to see how that is trending
over time in Google searches.
• Let’s look at the search term ‘LinkedIn’.

10. • One thing we start to notice is seasonality.
• At the end of every year, there’s a dip in popularity – because most
people aren’t working and aren’t checking LinkedIn.
• You can hover over any point of the trend line to get an exact date.

11. • You can also compare two search terms.
• Let’s add the search term ‘Myspace’

13. • If you add ‘MySpace’ to the search, you can see that it continues (all
these years after its failure) to lose traffic.
• LinkedIn, on the other hand, has increasing traffic.

14. • Now let’s take a look at ‘Facebook’

16. • We can see that Facebook is in a clear but slow decline.

17. • Unless we change the location to China, instead of the USA.

19. • China seems to be keeping its interest in Facebook, despite the fact
that it’s not an available service there yet.

20. • Let’s go back to the USA.
• But let’s change the time frame. Instead of the last 4 years, let’s
change that to since 2004 (Google’s data limit).

22. • Now we get a much, much clearer view of Facebook’s popularity.
• Facebook is in the decline phase of its product life cycle.

25. • Google Trends also shows us which search terms are ‘Break outs’ –
which means they’ve had a sudden burst in searches.
• Google will show you break-outs related to you chosen search term.
• Let check the break-outs for Facebook.

27. • ‘Facebook Espanol’ is breaking-out. Why?
• If we do a quick Google Search under News, we find that Facebook is
moving into the digital currency space in Spain.
• That news it generating interest, and an increase in search.

29. • Lastly: You can see the popularity of a search by location, which can
be highly useful for marketers looking to expand a product.
• It distributes demand over a world map.

32. • Google Trends – it’s a powerful tool, well worth using.