Google search trends lets you explore and visualize what the world is searching is now, searched in the past. Unlike keyword planner, this is a visualization tool that helps you detect patterns that repeat year over year, gives you latest trending searches.
What of data does Google Search Trend provide?
- Explore – It helps you:
- explore the search trends around a specific keyword for different duration across various geographies.
- This can help you identify seasonality that you should be ready for when planning your always on strategy for paid search spend as well as your campaigns.
- explore the search trends around a specific keyword for different duration across various geographies.
- It also provides you specific keywords that are seeing a huge
spike in their search volume (called as breakout)
- This can help you plan quick campaigns around specific events to drive relevant traffic. If executed well, this can help drive a lot of relevant traffic. The challenge ends up in having the right journey ready – relevant approved ad copy and content for the specific keywords
- When comparing multiple keywords, it gives you a
visualization where the color intensity represents the percentage of searches
for the leading search term in a particular region. In the screenshot below,
there are more searches happening for marketing, so it is the leading search
term. When you hover over the map, it will give you a split between the % of
searches happening for both the terms.
- This can be really powerful in choosing the right keyword among a lot of similar keywords, that your website should be optimized towards (SEO)
- If you are a global organization with a unique site across for each geography, you can use this tool to build the appropriate keyword optimization strategy for your geography.
- Trending Searches – This provides you access to:
- Daily Search Trends in a specific geography
- Realtime search trends in a specific geography across a specific topic
I find this tab a great tool to exploring the impact of news on search volume. This helps plan for campaigns in future for events that we expect will potentially happen. For example, planning a campaign around being prepared for recession related search terms in the event that US/China dialogue isn’t fruitful.
Realtime search trends are also really useful in case you are a publishing site or a blog that is looking to drive quick traffic to your site by talking about what people are searching.
Similar to Google, Bing also has a keyword planner. With over 23% searches still happening on Bing, it is equally important to look at the keyword planner for Bing. Unlike Google search trends, bing doesn’t have an equivalent tool that shows real time search trends.