Google Zeitgeist Has a Sibling, Google Trends
As noted in a Google press release, a new search tool, Google Trends, is available from Google Labs. It displays relative search volumes over time (from 2004 onward) for a set of user defined keywords and keyword phrases.
This example compares searches on the open source Web Analytics tools awstats and webalizer
While the possibilities are very interesting, a clear disclaimer warns
It is based upon just a portion of our searches, and several approximations are used when computing your results. Please keep this in mind when using it.
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Interesting one this..
..fun toy to play with against your own keywords.
Nice
I think this is quite helpful, would be nice if Google would give more of these kinds of insights into their traffic
Very Cool
Great tool
I don't understand what the
I don't understand what the results say. I'm still trying to figure it out. For example, the graphs have no numbers on them. What good does it do if you can't see what hte graph represents.
when you cross reference it
when you cross reference it with other tools the numbers are more useful. also it helps you find local regions of high search volume for a particular query...which is pretty useful.
ain't that something
ain't that something
one step further
Quite a battle going on here
Googleguy not doing too well
Added: Me thinks this is a rush job and the beginning of G's backlash with Alexa going to Microsoftware.
que...
Does this mean South Africans and Aussies are under endowed??
who knew?
there were so many porn fans in Scandinavia
http://google.com/trends?q=jenna+jameson&ctab=1&date=all&geo=all
Matt Cutts looks strange
strange patterns to Matt Cutts searches. Any blackhatters want to fess up to a "search matt cutts" campaign?
Also, check out Yahoo vs. Google. lol
check out Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan. I guess sometimes it pays to be the bad guy.
Since there is no indication of what kinds of volumes this tool has limited uses, but it is fun.
Off topic
I know this is off-topic, but why does http://www.google.com/trends work while http://www.google.com/trends/ gets a 404?
The most important benefit...
Though (as they say) it is based upon just a portion of searches and several approximations are used when computing the results, you can still find local regions of high search volume for a particular query and this is still VERY important, IMO.
Likely to be extremely useful...
I'm seeing this as an extremely useful tool. Shows very quickly how related market areas are evolving, what product lines on a site might deserve the most emphasis, and even whether certain business areas might be worth pursuing. I can email a link to a simple graph that sums up a lot of information previously difficult to get.
This is a very nice tool to
This is a very nice tool to look at, froma brand's perspective.
Who knew?
I could get this result
Setting false expectations: Google's unresolved conflict...
...with knowledge sharing.
Google wants to catalog the world's information. Like the traditional catalogers, librarians, Google wants to help us find information. Google teaches how the card catalog is composed, the different ways to search it (title, author, subject – remember?). So far, so good. But then Google finds itself in a quandary: it is afraid bad people out there will try to harm the catalog. So Google the librarian, dutifully teaching us how the catalog is updated, how we can help is conflicted with the Google who whats to keep everything in the “special collections area”.
Consider a few examples, starting with link tool, link:www.mysite.com. When a company of Google's stature decides it can no longer provide accurate results because said results are subject to misuse, they are faced with three choices:
I believe Google choose the 3rd option, rending the tool not only useless, but also highly misleading, doing a disservice to both Google's users and Google itself.
This same lack of transparency plagues other Google initiatives such as the otherwise excellent sitemaps (Google webmaster dashboard) program. While I don't believe in pagerank size queens, there it is in the middle of the stats, pagerank distribution for site pages. Certainly clients ask about it. Too bad no one seems to know how often, if ever, it is updated? Is it on the same every three months or so as the toolbar timeline?
In February, the sitemaps team announced the inclusion of “Common Words” stats. What they didn't say is that this information is only available for some sites, presumably better performing sites. There have been vague notes of “...as we find out more about your site...” which imparts a false hope that it is just an issue of a bit of patience. While Google needs to limit where it expends computing resources, they have set up a certain false expectation though poor, opaque, communication.
Google Suggest, now in the browser toolbar (at least for Firefox) implies a certain freshness by providing real time suggestions. While it is understandable that Google needs to cache queries, I'm seeing the same data I saw 6 months ago (admittedly for non-English terms). If the actual data was compiled 6 months ago, a year ago, fine. But please say so.
So, back to the Trends tool, while without doubt it is very interesting, my doubt is how accurate is it really? Are the skew factors sector specific? Country specific? Will they cripple it further?
Who's wining the internal debate on transparency?
india
is the home loan capital.
some of the variance is evident
http://google.com/trends?q=mortgage%2Cmortgage%2Cmortgage%2Cmortgage%2Cmortgage%2C&ctab=1&date=all&geo=all
Many in decline
According to this trends thingy, most of the keywords I make my coin with are all in decline since 2004 which I find bizarre as I'm on a top industry niche and MORE people are getting online in the last 2 years and my traffic went UP, not DOWN. Maybe the decline indicates that people are using other services and not just Google exclusively for my niche.
Did anyone look at dating?
http://google.com/trends?q=dating&ctab=1&date=all&geo=all
HUGE spike this year, looks like the event that triggered it was Shoemoney calling Markus a scam.
Couldn't resist.
Hot Link
Look at that, you can hot link the images.
Plentyoffish.com (blue )
AdultFriendFinder.com ( red )
Match.com ( orange )
Wow
After just a few queries, less than 30, I got this:
We're sorry, if you actually want to use this tool, too bad
Jerks
maybe your browser settings are too restrictive?
IncrediBILL, do you have cookies enabled in your browser? Are you using a customized UserAgentString?!?
If not, the message is a bit funny.
WHAT?
Of course I have cookies and not tampering with the user agent string...
It was either the types of queries I made or the hot link image the webprofessor inserted into this page causing the problem. Why I suspect the image is it quit displaying to me at the same time I got the error, now I see it again. I can easily reproduce it, wait 15 minutes or so and they let me back into the site without a problem.
antezeta, it is documented
antezeta, it is documented that link: only shows a sample of backlinks. We've always been pretty clear on that.
OK, Error stopped
Whatever was going on has stopped, I can't reproduce the error anymore.