After experimenting with the various Google tools, I have decided to blog about Google Trends, an amazing feature of Google that I honestly never knew about before this week’s lesson!
Google Trends is a Google tool that allows us to discover trends and hot topics from what most internet users are using Google search to search for. They provide graphs that show how frequently a term is typed into the Google search bar over time and the parts of the world where most people are searching for a given term. It goes one step further to enable us to view how a keyword's popularity has risen or declined over months or even years.
Google Trends is a powerful internet tool for people to do market research. It is an extremely efficient way for businessmen and marketers to investigate and determine what products or services are most popular at the present moment, thus enabling them to come up with business ideas and innovation according to these interests. Potential investors can also use these trends to decide whether or not they should invest or enter a certain market, since timing matters and Google Trends address that particular concern- the possibility that certain markets may be prospering at certain times while looking gloomy at others. However, while Google Trends is exceptionally useful for marketing purposes, it is not just limited to that.
On a more personal note, using Google Trends allow me to be aware of the latest updates on technology, global issues, celebrities, commercial brands and products, as well as many more of my interests. It gives us insights onto the popularity of terms being searched and equip us with constant knowledge of prevalent current and even past topics.
For instance, the term “Justin Bieber” was searched on Google so rampantly it hit more than 100, 000 hits and made it to the hot searches of Google Trend. Out of curiosity, I decided to enter his name into the Google Trend search and came up with the following results!
As indicated, Google search for Justin Bieber only started increasing exorbitantly from June of 2009- when his popularity had already started to rise and while he was still recording his debut album. Before he rose to fame, Google Trends showed that search results for his name returned 0. So I would say that I am pleasantly surprised by this feature of Google (that I never knew before) and am in awe of its accuracy!! Similarly, alphabet G indicates the peak search volume, and that was in February 2011- when Justin Bieber got on the Ellen Degeneres Show on 23rd of February. Obviously then, increased traffic of searches for the rising star can be expected! This clearly goes to show that Google Trends is indeed useful in helping us mark significant dates and events, which inevitably also enables marketers to make predictions for future trends and behaviors based on that.
Another interesting feature of Google Trend is the fact that it also shows the most related terms to what is being searched for by people all over the world. As seen above in the Justin Bieber case, it appears that people who had searched for Justin Bieber unsurprisingly also looked up Selena Gomez, whom he was attached to for a period of time. (Hah!)
Now, just to satisfy my personal curiosity, I decided to look up Volkswagen vs Audi on Google Trends… And I am appalled to discover that Google searches for Audi significantly exceeds that of Volkswagen!
While it does not necessarily mean more people prefer purchasing Audi cars rather than Volkswagen, it does point to the fact that more people are at the very least, interested in the former brand and are doing more research on it compared to the latter brand. Google Trends also cleverly provide a regional interest diagram which shows the search volume index of countries all over the world to show what people at different parts and regions of the world are searching for most respectively.
Making the video on Windows Live Movie Maker is easy enough even for people who are not tech-savy (like myself) to use and make their own video clips. It is a relatively simple format in my opinion, which I am thankful for because even though it is only my second time using this program, I was able to at least grasp the basic features and successfully produce a video! (And note that I used words like “simple” and “basic”. Thus I am sad to say, the standard of my video is far from that made by professionals haha) I hope all of you will enjoy the short video I made on the day a few of our classmates and I went for Rachel’s 21st birthday party!
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