Google Trends Advanced Tips

- Welcome to another Google Trends tutorial episode!
I'm Daniel Waisberg, Search Advocate at Google.
I'm really happy to introduce you
to the Google Trends Engineering Manager, Omri Weisman.
- Hi, Daniel, thanks for the opportunity!
It's great to leave my desk for a moment
and join you in the Google Trends tutorial series.
I'm excited to share some of the ideas that we have
about how to best use our product.
-In this video, we'll talk about advanced features,
such as special characters, and detailed comparison filters
that may help you find the exact data you're looking for.
GOOGLE TRENDS
-In the previous episode,
Hadas and Daniel walked you through the main features and capabilities of Google Trends.
So, if you missed it,
you might want to check it out before you watch this video.
We also learned that it's usually best to search for topics rather than terms.
Topics are language agnostic and include misspellings,
but if there's no topic that matches your search,
you can use punctuation to find exactly what you need.
This is why I'll start with punctuation.
ADVANCED SEARCH WITH PUNCTUATION
If you search for the term "boat trip" with no punctuation,
your results will contain both words in any order;
no misspellings, variations, or plural versions will be included.
We can alter this in three main ways:
using quotation marks, the plus operator or the minus operator.
Searching for "boat trip" in quotation marks shows you the data for this exact term,
possibly with words before or after.
If you search for "boat" minus "trip,"
results will include the word "boat" but exclude the word "trip."
If you search for "boat" plus "trip,"
results can include the words "boat" or "trip."
Note that the last option will always have a higher search interest than the previous two,
because it's the broadest one.
When it comes to languages, Hadas mentioned in the previous episode
that searching for a topic will cover all languages,
which can be useful to understand the bigger trend.
However, if you're interested in a specific language,
you might want to look only for that language.
For example, if you enter the Japanese character for "cat,"
pronounced "neko" in Japanese,
you might miss the overall trends,
since many people in the US, for example, search for "cat" in English.
To get the full picture,
compare searches for the Japanese character for "cat"
and English searches for "cat" using the plus operator.
ADVANCED COMPARISON MODE
-Getting the data you need is essential,
but to understand what it means, you need a comparison point.
For example, is the growth localized or global?
Is the growth seasonal,
and if so, how does this season compare to the previous one?
To create a meaningful comparison,
you can use the filter capability inside the search term.
Let's take a look at some examples to understand it better.
Let's say you own a travel agency in the UK
and you're interested in search interest for the term "boat trip."
How are people interested in it over time?
First, enter the term in the Trends' Explore section
and change the time frame to five years.
This will create an interesting chart showing that this term is highly seasonal.
People search for "boat trips" significantly more in the UK summer than in the winter.
To learn more about data seasonality, check the links in the description.
While it's interesting to know the time of year when the term has a higher interest,
you'll need more information if you want to make decisions based on the data.
You can use a special filter to analyze trends year over year.
This will help you neutralize the seasonality effect,
making sure you're comparing like for like.
Start by changing the date to "Past 12 months,"
add an identical term to the "Compare" box and hover over the box.
Click the three dots menu and select "Change filters."
Here, you see two options: location and time range.
Click the time range and select "Custom time range"
to choose the previous time period.
If you're looking for full years,
you can use the built-in capability to choose the past five years.
That would make your search quicker.
After these steps, you'll end up with two lines in your chart:
one for the past 12 months and a second for the previous 12 months.
You can repeat this further up to five times.
With this view of the data, you can see very clearly that,
even after you neutralize the seasonality effect,
the trend is upwards.
That being so, search interest has been growing year over year for "boat trips."
Now, let's assume you're based in the United Kingdom
and you're interested in expanding your business to the United States.
Let's look at the past five years of data for "boat trips."
Now we add an identical search term, and instead of comparing date ranges,
we compare the United States to the United Kingdom.
The data shows that the search interest for "boat trips" in the UK
has been consistently higher than that of the US over the past five years.
Maybe you change your strategy
and look at other countries to expand your business.
You can compare up to five markets in the same way.
MONITORING, EXPORTING, AND SHARING DATA
-There are a few ways for you to share, export and monitor trends
for the search terms you're interested in.
One of the cool things about sharing and exporting capabilities
is that they'll keep your data filters.
If you're doing an advanced comparison
and feel like you need help from a colleague or some specialized tool,
you can export the data and continue your analysis somewhere else.
The easiest way to share Trends
is by copying the page URL after you finish your analysis.
When you add terms and customize filters, this URL updates.
This means that, if you create a complex comparison
using any of the tips we've shared in this video,
they'll be reflected in the URL,
so anyone you share it with will see exactly what you're seeing.
Another way to share a chart is to embed it on your website.
You can generate an embeddable card to add to your website
from almost any card on the page.
These cards will show up-to-date data
and may also reproduce some in-product interactions.
You can also export the data from each of the cards to a spreadsheet.
Click the "Export" button and a CSV file will download,
which you can then use to do further analysis or visualization.
Wow, I feel like taking a boat trip now.
Those numbers are so convincing!
-I know, Google Trends can take you places!
-We hope that you learned a few tricks to make the most out of Google Trends data,
and that now you understand how search interest works over time.
-In the next episode,
we'll talk about ways for you to check what's trending right now.
Don't forget to subscribe to the Google Search Central YouTube channel
to be the first to watch it.
-Stay trendy!
GOOGLE TRENDS