Google Trends can be a helpful tool for your business and your marketing efforts. Here’s what you need to know and a few helpful ways to use Google Trends:
What is Google Trends?
Google Trends is a useful site from Google that allows you to explore search trends more deeply. You can use queries or topics to see what kind of search interest they have in Google over time, and you can dig deeper into:
- Specific regions
- Languages
- Related topics or terms
- Specific platforms
- And more
In addition to exploring things you already have in mind, you can also take a look through the sections about what is currently trending and what has recently been trending. Also, there are the “Year in Search” reports, where you can see what was trending on Google in a certain year, or “Today in Search” to see what is currently trending across the web.
11 Helpful Ways to Use Google Trends
Here are a few helpful ways to use Google Trends to help support your marketing efforts and grow your business:
- Find new content ideas.
- Take advantage of current trends.
- Plan out a more accurate content calendar.
- Look for local opportunities.
- Track brand awareness and popularity.
- Diagnose seasonal traffic drops.
- Identify new opportunities to update content.
- Figure out the best way to repurpose content.
- Improve your social media posts.
- Identify new markets or opportunities.
- Find impactful improvements for ecommerce.
1. Find New Content Ideas
Business blogging is a great way to add new content to your website, increase the ways people can find you online, increase brand awareness and leads, and more. But, if the topics are irrelevant to your potential customers or the content is poorly written, it doesn’t do much for you and, in some cases, can hurt your visibility in search.
Finding the right ideas for existing and future content is one of the reasons why keyword research is important. Coming up with content ideas can be difficult, and making sure they’re the right ones for your business is essential. When you find yourself stuck in keyword research or blanking during brainstorming, Google Trends can help you use data to generate content ideas.
A simple Google search can also help to kickstart your creativity. But, Google Trends will help you dig deeper into specific topics to help you determine topics that your target audience cares about. You can also switch from Web Search to Image Search, News Search, Google Shopping, or YouTube Search to see how things change and what new topics pop up.
2. Take Advantage of Current Trends
The “Trending now” feature in Google Trends can be a goldmine of content ideas, whether for your website, email marketing, social media marketing, etc. It also gives you the opportunity to take advantage of the current trends that are relevant to you and your target audience.
This does not mean jumping on or chiming in on every trending topic. Just because it exists and people are talking about it doesn’t mean it always makes sense for your brand to talk about it. However, when it is used effectively, Google Trends can help you create timely content and be at the forefront of thought leadership, trends, and news in your industry.
This can have the added benefit of getting more exposure via quotes or citations in other publications. If you’re on top of emerging trends or breakout topics, journalists, bloggers, and creators covering those topics may find and choose you (and your brand) as a source in the content they are creating. This can be a good way to integrate aspects of digital PR into your content research and creation.
3. Plan Out a More Accurate Content Calendar
Another one of the helpful ways to use Google Trends, in the vein of timely content, is to analyze peaks and valleys in search interest around specific topics, identify any seasonal trends for relevant topics, and then plan out a more timely and accurate content calendar.
This makes Google Trends a valuable resource when you are creating an editorial calendar. Not only does this help ensure that your content is being created and promoted when it is most relevant to your target audience, but it can also increase reach, engagement, conversions, etc. because of it.
4. Look For Local Opportunities
Local SEO is essential for businesses with specific service areas or regional target markets. It’s only become more important with the continued rollout of AI features in search engines and the continued fracturing of the search landscape with AI chatbots, agents, etc.
In the evolving search landscape, being able to find and capitalize on local opportunities can boost local visibility. In Google Trends, you can search by or filter your searches to refine them to different regions and locations. Using these features, you can see how specific areas search for a topic and compare how different areas search for the same topic.
You can also pick a specific metro area to see what is trending in that region, whether it’s near you or near your target market. You can even go “Worldwide” to see how things change on a global scale. This allows you to discover opportunities in specific regions and subregions and then target your content and campaigns for those areas to those areas.
5. Track Brand Awareness and Popularity
Google Analytics or another analytics tool will help you track traffic to your site over time. But, Google Trends is a quick way to see how the search interest in branded terms, products, or services has grown over time.
Not only can you get an idea of how popular your own branded searches are, but you can also look at competitors’ branded terms as well. Additionally, you can compare brands to see how they perform against each other. This can help you:
- Track your own brand visibility over time, especially when attribution isn’t clear
- Stay informed on where your main competitors are in comparison to you
- Help you identify potential new competitors in your space
6. Diagnose Seasonal Traffic Drops
Some industries have more severe seasonal traffic drops than others. If you have several years of analytics data available for your website, you likely have an idea of seasonal traffic trends for your site and your industry. Being able to cross-reference and validate those drops with Google Trends can be helpful in diagnosing whether a drop in traffic is a normal seasonal trend or an indication that something else is going on.
It’s particularly useful for newer websites that may not have several years of their own traffic data to reference or when something unprecedented shakes up your industry, like a global pandemic, a major shift in the search landscape, a notable expansion of AI in search, new search features, etc.
7. Identify New Opportunities to Update Content
Freshness, relevance, comprehensiveness, context, search intent, etc. all still matter. The content on your website needs to be relevant, up to date, and continue to meet search intent in order to have a chance of showing up in LLMs, AI chatbots, AI engines, AI features in traditional search engines, and more.
With Google Trends, especially in the context of keyword, topic, and content research, you can check keywords and identify new opportunities to guide where and how to update your existing content. With fan-out queries, longer question and answer style prompts, more questions in general, and more across search, Google Trends can be a useful content marketing tool to help you identify content gaps and search intent mismatches in your current content.
Use those insights to make your content more effective and give it a better chance of showing up when someone is searching, no matter where they are searching. The decline of overall organic search traffic and the rise of “zero-click search” make continued visibility more essential. Even if it doesn’t result in a click back to your website at that moment, you still have that visibility and an established brand touchpoint that can lead to further searches, a later website visit or other online interaction with your brand, a future conversion, etc.
8. Figure Out the Best Way to Repurpose Content
Aside from updating it, one of the best ways to keep your old content working for you is to repurpose it into other formats. One great blog post can easily become several social media posts, different types of content across social media platforms, a slide deck, a video or video series, lead magnet ideas, etc.
If you have videos, you can also repurpose video content into several other formats to make the most of the content you create. Because Google Trends is all about search interest, you can use it to narrow down interest in related topics and also figure out the best ways to repurpose the content you have.
The content formats that resonate the best with your target audience may vary depending on the topic, the specific perspective you have, the platform they’re consuming it on, and more. Google Trends, paired with some other research, can help you focus your efforts on what matters to your target audience.
9. Improve Your Social Media Posts
Since you can use Google Trends to determine queries that are currently popular, have recently been popular, and preferred terms within topics, you can use it to improve your social media posts.
Identify What People Are Talking About
Although Google Trends focuses on popular Google searches, and things can vary by social platform, you can still use it to get a pulse on what people are paying attention to. This is how you can start to use social listening and incorporate it into your social media marketing efforts.
Determine If Trending Topics Are Right For Your Brand
Make sure you are looking into the content, context, sentiment, and intent around any trends and understand them before your brand gets involved. If not, you may end up with an online reputation management problem and a PR crisis before you know it.
Instead of risking going viral as a brand fail, use Google Trends and some research on individual social media platforms to determine which topics might be relevant to your brand, would make sense for you to be involved in, and how to approach them so you’re joining the conversation seamlessly.
Plan Out Seasonal Topics and Content Types
Even if you don’t want to jump on current trends, you can figure out when it makes the most sense to start posting things on seasonal topics, holidays, etc., as well as what types of content to post on social media that will suit the topic, your audience, and the platform the best.
You can start with Google Trends and go from there by changing the filter from Web Search to YouTube Search, Google Shopping, Google News, etc. But, you can also start with some topic research on social media platforms and then dig deeper into them on Google Trends to help you with ideas for posts on those platforms.
10. Identify New Markets or Opportunities
Looking at what people have searched for and what they’re currently searching for can help identify new opportunities for your business and, potentially, new markets as well. You may be able to catch upcoming trending searches that offer your business the opportunity to innovate and meet those needs. At the same time, you may be able to identify current gaps in your industry or your current offerings that your business can fill in a way that creates new opportunities to generate revenue.
11. Find Impactful Improvements For Ecommerce
With the data for Google Shopping available in Google Trends, ecommerce brands can use this tool to keep up with ecommerce trends and identify product improvements or potential new products that directly impact the bottom line.
Taking advantage of the available tools and taking the time to find meaningful insights can grow your ecommerce business. Insights gleaned from Google Trends can also be valuable for improving strategies and campaigns in Shopping Ads and making impactful, iterative improvements in Google Merchant Center.
Whether you’re looking into ecommerce holiday prep or general growth opportunities, Google Trends is a valuable resource you don’t want to overlook.
Use Google Trends to Benefit Your Business
These are just a few ways to use Google Trends to help improve your marketing efforts and benefit your business. Several of these methods could also help improve your brainstorming sessions in general to help you continue to grow your business online. But, if your website isn’t designed and built to offer a great user experience and support your business, your efforts can fall flat once your target customer is on your site. Contact us for a meeting of the MINDs to talk about how we can help get your website back on track and performing for your business!