Google Trends is a public web tool released by Google, that provides a graphic representation of how frequently any given term is searched for, according to date, region and language.
This lets you see when, and how frequently, people are looking for certain search terms. It also lets you compare up to five different search terms on its graph, for an estimate of their relative performance in terms of how people use the internet to search for things.
Below the graph, the information is broken down further into more generalised regional and language segments, while instances of the search term appearing in Google News are marked on the graph.
Related Google Trends Tools
Insights For Search
In addition to the Google Trends tool, Google has also made Insights For Search available a tool, that allows you to compare search volume patterns across a variety of different categories. Effectively, it provides additional options to the more basic overview available with Google Trends.
Most notably, Google’s Insights For Search provides a forecast of anticipated search trends. Google bases this forecast on previous data, and shows a section of its graph predicting search frequency for a year ahead of the current time.
Google Hot Trends
Another addition to the Google Trends tool is the Hot Trends service. On this page, Google displays the top 100 evolving queries for any given day. Although currently this page displays only searched from the United States, it’s believed that other countries will be added to the options in time.
In Conclusion
These tools are useful additions to any search researchers, and although they are based on estimates, they nonetheless provide some interesting data. Furthermore, if you have, or create, a Google account, you can gain access to some additional functionality.