Google Trends And Its Use For Internet Marketers

Google Trends And Its Use For Internet Marketers

Over the past few months, I’ve been looking at the Google Trends page (https://www.google.co.uk/trends/) on an irregular basis to try and see if there could be any use in the trends it publishes for Internet Marketers and how this information could be used.

Google Trends is supplied freely by Google Inc and the numbers are based on their popular Google Search facility. They reflect how often a specific search term is entered relative to the total search volume in simple terms. This can also be broken down across regions and languages, but I have not spent time looking at these breakdowns, just the headline topics.

For example, on the opening day of the British Open recently, I looked at the list of top trending items around 8am and they were showing a value of 10,000+ searches for the heading “British Open”. There were two or three other popular items at this time with around the same value, but by 11am, the value for the British Open was at 100,000+ searches and the other terms were still at or near their original values.

I was looking the other day just after there was a story about Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, standing as an MP in the near future and the TV programme, The Great British Bake Off, was back on the box again. Both of these topics again at 8am were showing 20,000+ searches. Even Howard Webb, the English referee who has just retired, was trending at the same number.

So what could this mean for an Internet Marketer and increasing the possible traffic to his blog?

Simply, if you were running a site about Home Baking or a similar product/service related to that field, writing a blog or two about, or referencing, the Great British Bake Off should get you some extra traffic to your site. If your site quality is good then these people may bookmark you and come back and visit again and end up on your list and buying product from you.

Alternatively, if you run a site about sport related activities, preparing and posting about relevant events in your particular field would also get you extra traffic.

Now if you are in the field of making money online, the opportunities are smaller unless you do add a popular topic that is out of context to the rest of your articles although, on my blog as you will have noticed, I publish the occasional article under my “Grumpy Old Man” headline and I could probably drop something in here about non-related topics and get away with it.

That is not to say you can’t make full use of the service.

Below the main searched items are always some charts and graphs showing specific topics and then below that you can select “More Top Charts”. This takes you to a further set of tables showing most popular searches over a longer period and you might be able to find something on there that will link into your own blog or just create a series of thoughts for a new blog.

So do I think that Google Trends will help me get more traffic with my current blog? Maybe not, but I can see that if I move into other areas where popular searches are relevant then I think I can utilise the service for my specific purposes!

What is your opinion? Tell me below in the Comment box and we can have a discussion about the implications and usefulness of Google Trends.