Google Creates Trend Hunting Search Engine - Additional Functionality and Information (Page 4 of 4 )
As I’ve already mentioned, you can compare up to five terms in Google Trends by separating them with commas. So if you’re comparing trends for notebooks and laptops, you enter notebook, laptop, and click on “Search Trends.” Or you can compare a whole string; as you can see in the first screen shot, one of the examples Google uses compares four terms, blue, red, yellow, green.
What if you don’t want to compare particular terms as much as gauge interest? Perhaps you’re interested in seeing how many searches were done that contained either of two terms. In that case, you’d put in the two terms and separate them with a pipe (vertical bar): notebook | laptop.
What if you’re using multi-word terms, as many searches do? In that case, you need to use parentheses. So a search comparing bathing suits and bikinis would go in as (bathing suit), bikini. This is particularly important when using the pipe. If you searched for bathing suit | bikini, Google Trends will interpret that to mean you want to see all searches for “bathing suit” and “bathing bikini,” which is nonsense (especially considering how rarely most bikinis ever hit the water!).
Just as with the main search engine, you can restrict your searches by including a minus sign before a particular term. If you’re interested in seeing how many searches included the term “ephemera,” which often refers to antique paper items, but you want to exclude old maps, you can enter ephemera –maps.
Another tool that carries over from the main search engine is quotation marks. If you want to see results that contain only your terms in the specific order you’ve entered them, use quotation marks. Google Trends defaults to showing you all searches containing the terms you entered, in any order. That could change the meaning significantly for certain terms! It is worth noting, though, that the news portion of Google Trends doesn’t support these advanced features (quotation marks, minus signs, or vertical bars) – at least, not yet.
Google Trends does have Terms of Use, and you’ll want to check those out. As Google puts it, “We hope you find this service interesting and entertaining, but you probably don’t want to write your PhD dissertation based on this information.” I’d specifically suggest you check out item number two, Proper Use, which states in part that you can’t “use the Site to increase traffic to your Web site for commercial reasons, such as advertising sales…If you wish to use any portion of the Site for commercial purposes, please contact us for more information.” At a guess, that probably doesn’t mean you can’t use that site to help you with SEO, but if you have any doubt, you might want to contact Google.
There is also a discussion group for Google Trends. All in all, this looks like a very promising and potentially powerful tool. You should find it well worth trying out.
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