Dieter Petereit December 3rd, 2013

Brand-new Topic Reports + Top Charts: Google Trends Finally Becomes Useful

Google Trends is a tool to measure people's interest in a certain topic. To decide which articles to write, which products to offer or at least how to properly describe your offerings, you need insight in what it is, that raises people's attention. If you're into internet marketing you know that Google offers a tool for that use case. Google Trends wants to do just that, help you recognize what interests Google Search users most. Yet, Trends has its quirks. A new update removes the biggest...

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Topic Reports Take the Ambiguity out of Google Trends

The biggest enhancement by far is the introduction of the all new Topic Reports. To compare how certain search terms or phrases rank, you were always able to feed them to Trends. The problem was, that it was never sure that you really triggered Trends right. Especially entering ambiguous search terms, such as "rice", would lead to unclear and unreliable results. Were you looking for the cereal or the former US ministry or the university by the same name?

rice v harvard strings

With Topics Reports Google starts offering results as soon as you start typing. That way you can make sure that really only the interest in "Rice University" is measured. You see the difference to the above screenshot?

rice v harvard entities

Also, Google Trends now tries to measure misspellings or alternative terms and phrases for the same topic. If you are looking for e.g. "Gwyneth Paltrow", Trends will now automatically add as many different, but related terms to the report. That way, reports get much closer to reality, where not everybody searches for the same terms, even while searching for the same terms.

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Top Charts Shows What Was Hottest In The Past

If you are not searching for specific topics, but are looking to cover what interests the most people, Google's new Topic Reports won't do the job. It is the also new Top Charts where you'll be wanting to go. Top Charts is only available for the United States at the time of this writing and shows which topics where the most searched for. Results are monthly with an offset of one month. Today you'll be able to access the newest results from October 2013 and back.

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Grouped into categories such as Cars, DJs and more, depending on what actually where the most active topics in search, Trends gives you a detailed insight in what you should cover in your articles, product descriptions, page contents in general.

I think, this is great news. Both updates are in limited beta by now. Top Charts will work world-wide, yet only with American results reflected. Topic Reports works in Brazil, France, Germany, India, Italy, UK, and the US. Our readership sees good coverage already ;-)

[via Google's Insidesearch-blog]

Featured Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Dieter Petereit

Dieter Petereit is a veteran of the web with over 25 years of experience in the world of IT. As soon as Netscape became available he started to do what already at that time was called web design and has carried on ever since. Two decades ago he started writing for several online publications, some well, some lesser known. You can meet him over on Google+.

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