Reading Huffington Post today, I came across an interesting article that used Google Trends to point out weird corollaries in search terms and the even weirder things that people are searching for in high volume nowadays. ((HuffPost Article: Outrageous Trends))
The beauty of Google Trends is that it aggregates all search terms that people are entering and shows you a comparison of any terms you like. As an SEO professional, it proved helpful for understanding volume and popularity of a concept's individual keywords. But this tool has some other great uses too. I present here my own take on Google Trends - it allows you to have some insight into what is happening in the world, what excites people, and in general the current state of people's minds.
Concept: Content Consumption
I put in "Blog" "Book" "Television" and "Mobile" and here are the results. How illustrative this chart is, showing that blogs and television trend inversely to each other, that blogs didn't become popular until 2006 (when it hit 1.00 on the volume index, which is Google average) that Books have made a comeback in the past year, and mobile continues its slightly increasing volume in the past 5 years.
Blog, Book, Television, Mobile Search Trends
Concept: Ailments
Seems that AIDS is on people's minds when its in the news (World AIDS Day) but that cancer is more commonly searched and blips higher when there is a celebrity who has died (Farrah Fawcett, Edward Kennedy, Patrick Swayze). Strangely enough, if you look close enough at the chart, Doctor and Cancer trend inversely to each other, while "Cure" continues to be a lesser searched word. We'll have to wait for the Cure and the Cancer line to dissect each other, hopefully in the near future.
Seems that AIDS is on people's minds when its in the news (World AIDS Day) but that cancer is more commonly searched and blips higher when there is a celebrity who has died (Farrah Fawcett, Edward Kennedy, Patrick Swayze). Strangely enough, if you look close enough at the chart, Doctor and Cancer trend inversely to each other, while "Cure" continues to be a lesser searched word. We'll have to wait for the Cure and the Cancer line to dissect each other, hopefully in the near future.
AIDS, Cancer, Cure, Doctor Search Trends
There are millions of concepts such as "Ailments" and "Content Consumption" that can show bizarre and insightful trends. What are some concepts that you would like to see a popularity contest between keywords?
And as a side note: My little synopsis here begs the question - what types of insight can world policy makers gain from using this?
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