Google Trends walkthrough

- Welcome to another Google Trends tutorial episode.
I'm Daniel Waisberg, Search Advocate at Google,
and in this video, I'm joined by Hadas Jacobi, Google Trends Engineer.
- Hi, Daniel.
I'm very glad to join you and share more about how to use Google Trends.
One thing that's always top of mind for us
is building a product that is user-friendly and insightful.
-In this episode, we'll use an example to show you how to compare trends
for a group of search terms or topics,
and then we'll explain each of the filters and cards available in the product.
GOOGLE TRENDS
-Google Trends is a powerful tool that provides valuable insights
into what people are searching on Google and YouTube.
Whether you're a marketer, journalist or researcher,
understanding Google Trends can help you uncover emerging trends
and make informed decisions.
On our last episode, we had an introduction to Google Trends data.
Check it out to understand more about that.
Let's start by exploring the home page of Google Trends.
Here, you can see a search bar,
where you can enter search terms or topics to explore.
Let's say you own a coffee shop
and you'd like to learn about preferences in your region,
or maybe you like coffee a lot, like me,
and want to know what people around you think about it.
Type "cappuccino" into the search bar and choose the "coffee drink" topic.
This will lead you to the Explore page.
Just to make things more interesting,
let's add two more topics: "latte" and "espresso."
You can explore up to five topics or terms at a time.
It's best if you compare like for like:
Compare topics with other topics and search terms with other search terms.
This is the best practice because each topic includes lots of terms,
so it might be misleading to compare a topic to a single term.
In this example, you can see a line chart with three lines,
one for each topic, showing the search interest over time.
There are four filters to help refine your search
and pinpoint trends specific to your area of interest.
You can choose a location.
For example, if you're writing an article
about the change in coffee consumption patterns in Brazil,
you can choose "Brazil" here,
or you can choose "Worldwide" to see global trends.
You can choose a time period.
If you're interested in longer trends, you can select the past five years
or all the data available,
or pick your own date range, if you prefer.
You can choose a category.
Google Trends allows you to explore trends within specific areas,
such as Food & Drink or online communities.
Lastly, you can choose a Google property to look at trends
for Google Search, Images, News, Shopping or YouTube Search.
Another cool thing to test is to leave the search term field blank
and play with the filters.
This reverse approach gives you the most common search topics and queries
for a specific location, time frame, category or property.
We'll talk about different use cases
where you might use this view of the data throughout the series.
-After you choose your filters, the charts, maps and tables will all update,
and you'll be ready to start exploring.
But, wait, where were we?
-Coffee!
-Yes, Hadas is on the hunt for coffee drinks.
-Back to the coffee search interest in Brazil.
You can see a bar chart next to the main line chart.
Each bar represents a search term or topic you're exploring.
They show the average search interest for each of them.
That's a high-level view to help you understand
how the terms compare to each other in general.
In this example, "cappuccino" is the topic with the highest search interest.
The peaks and valleys on the graph
represent fluctuations in search interest over time.
By analyzing these patterns,
you can identify seasonal trends, news events,
and other factors influencing how people are searching for coffee over time.
For example, here you can see that "cappuccino" has a higher search interest
between May and September, around wintertime in Brazil.
If the chart has many drops to zero,
it's often an indication that the term you're searching
doesn't have a large enough sample,
which means that the non-zero points are likely to be statistical noise.
For example, if you look at the same chart for a different time range,
you'll notice a lot of points where the line goes down to zero.
This means that we don't have enough data for this search term for this period.
You should ignore this data.
In this case, try looking at a broader audience;
for example, choosing "Worldwide" instead of only "Brazil,"
or you could choose a broader search term.
Maybe the search term you're analyzing
just doesn't have enough searches.
Below the main chart, you'll find a few cards.
First, you'll see a region breakdown comparison.
If your location is set to "Worldwide," you'll see search interest by country.
If you've selected the country, you'll see interest by subregion.
Darker shaded areas have a higher level of search interest.
You can view the data group by country, region, city,
and in some countries, you can also view search interest by metro area.
To select your desired breakdown, use the menu at the top right of the map.
When you hover over a country or use the list view,
you'll see the search interest for that particular country,
just as you do with other Google Trends data.
This number will always be between zero and 100:
100 being assigned to the term
with the highest search interest on a specific date.
The search interest for all the other search terms
will be adjusted proportionally to the highest point,
creating what we call a normalized index.
-Lastly, you'll see tables for related topics and related queries
connected to the term or topic you entered.
To scroll through the results, click the arrows below the table.
By default, the tables display rising data for both topics and queries.
These topics or queries have seen the largest increase in search frequency
since the previous time period.
For example, if you're looking at the past 12 months of search interest,
Trends will calculate the largest increase between the past and the previous 12 months,
always using an equal time range.
You can see the percent increase in search interest
next to each topic or search term.
Breakout searches have increased by over 5,000% in the given time frame.
Usually, these are new, or had very low search volume previously.
Click the top right of the card where it says "Rising" and switch to "Top."
These are the queries or topics with the highest search volume.
They aren't necessarily rising,
but they have the highest search interest among the related topics and queries.
You can click the menu on the right of each term to explore it in more detail.
-Before we go, one last important point:
Since you're not looking at absolute numbers,
when sharing your data analysis,
you should avoid statements such as "We've seen 100% growth in Google searches."
Make it clear that this is an approximation,
for example, by saying "There was a growth in search interest of approximately 100%."
Also, remember you can only compare search terms
when you search for them side by side.
If you search for two terms separately,
each will have a different normalization index,
so they can't be compared.
The numbers you see represent search interest
relative to the highest point on the chart for the given region and time.
-In summary, Google Trends helps you gain insights into search trends
and understand audience interests.
By exploring the data and applying it to your work,
you can make more informed decisions.
-The best way to learn how to use Trends is to play around with the tool,
so head over to trends.google.com and try out some searches.
It's fun!
-Thank you for watching. We hope you found it helpful.
To get more tips on using Google Trends,
subscribe to the Google Search Central YouTube channel.
-And stay tuned!
-This is a cappuccino, this is a latte, and this is an espresso!
-I don't understand.
Google Trends says that "espresso" has way more search interest,
but cappuccinos are so much better!
-I didn't know there was so much interest in coffee on the web.
GOOGLE TRENDS