Google Creates Trend Hunting Search Engine - Checking out the Second Chart

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Okay, you’re probably wondering about that bar graph now. Here’s a better shot of it:

 

Again, apologies for the truncation; this chart normally shows the top ten under each tab. If you haven’t spotted the SEO uses for this tool up to now, you should be flooded with ideas just from this chart alone. Maybe not this specific chart (though I love what it implies about the folks in Dublin – they go for the gusto whatever the season), but certainly other comparisons would be very helpful depending on your clients.

To take an example out of a hat, let’s say you’re trying to optimize a web site for a computer electronics dealer located in New York City. The client wants to push its line of notebook computers. But what term is more popular for this product, notebook or laptop? Using this tool, you can find out not only which term is in more general use, but which term is more popular in your client’s home region. Doesn’t that sound like it would be a huge help when trying to optimize your client’s site?

So how does Google figure out which are the top cities, regions, and languages for particular terms? How do those tabs work anyway? Well, Google Trends looks at a sample of all Google searches to determine the top cities for your first term. Then, for those cities, it calculates the ratio of searches for each city based on the total searches it received from the same city. The bar charts represent the ratios. Google can determine city and region by using IP address information from its server logs. For language information, Google simply looks at the language version of the Google site on which the search was entered.

Because we’re dealing in ratios, it’s worth remembering that the information you see on these charts is relative. As Google puts it, “just because a particular region isn’t in the Top Regions list for the term ‘haircut’ doesn’t necessarily mean that people there have decided to stage a mass rebellion against society’s conventions.” There could be any number of reasons for that, including that residents of that region perform so many searches for other topics that searches for “haircut” make up a tiny percentage, especially when compared to other regions.

Next: Additional Functionality and Information >>
 

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Comments On: Google Creates Trend Hunting Search Engine

· Thank you for reading this article. Have you used Google Trends? What did you think...    · The association of news with the peaks is a really good idea. I used it to search...    · Thanks for your comment! I know I went at it specifically from an SEO point of view,...    · Why is it that if this normalised algortihm is not working properly that results...    · I love Google Trends. We are in the business of designing urban/hip-hop tees, and...   >>> Post your comment now!