Those geekus maximus Google engineers have done it again. With Google Trends you can see the history for different search terms over time. You can compare search terms alone or against other terms.

"So what?" you may be asking... Well, think about it this way. If you have a web site, wouldn't it be best to optimize it for the search terms people are using? I live in the Phoenix suburb of Gilbert. Like any large metroplolitan area, there are LOTS of suburbs around here. Which one of them gets the most search queries? Well, let's go to Google Trends and find out....

Hmmm... interesting. Looks like between these five Phoenix suburbs, maybe I should be focusing my efforts on Mesa and Scottsdale. And if I decide to go with either Chandler, Tempe, or Gilbert then it's pretty much a toss up. 

Mesa clearly has more search results than Scottsdale. Or does it? The terms used above are very generic and encompass alot of different things. Let's look at Mesa and Scottsdale a little closer to home:

There's a longer history for Scottsdale, but looking at current history, not so much difference between the two as the first trend shows. So it's important to refine your trend queries. But if you refine them too much there won't be enough data for Google to plot. You just have to play around with it.

Google Trends is an interesting tool. I'm not saying you should blindly follow what it shows you, but it can be helpful in trying to determine where to focus your website efforts. It's also a heck of a lot of fun, in a techno-geek sort of way. Here's an interesting trend:

I see a couple of interesting things here. One is there is a distinct drop off in search volume in the fourth quarter of both 2004 and 2005. Most agents will tell you their business drops off toward the end of the year and peaks in the summer. This trend certainly supports that. The other thing to note is that KW seems well behind some of the other big boys. But wait! There's more!  Google Trends also supplies some city data as well. Here's that city data for the brokerage trends:

C21 dominates in New York City, and KW is nowhere to be found there. But look at Oklahoma City... KW, C21 and Remax are in basically a dead heat. What does this tell us? Not a whole heck of a lot. But I bet it tells some KW exec they need to expand to the Northeast... 

You can also use Google Trends for totally useless things. A couple of years ago my now 12 year old daughter was a big Britney Spears fan. That has since faded (thank goodness!). And apparently my daughter is not alone in her current opinion of Ms. Spears...

Note the news references for Brit are relatively steady over the years. Yet the search volume is steadily declining. Less tenny-boppers searching for Britney pics means less popularity for the (former) pop diva. 

Again, I would not base my entire web optimization strategy on Google Trends, but it is another good tool in the Search Engine Optimization arsenal.

Give it a whirl. It's easy, it's free and you get that warm fuzzy geeky feeling when you use it! If anyone comes up with an interesting trend analysis, I'd be interested in seeing it.