Google Trends And the New Navigation Menu

I've recently watched someone browse the web and I was surprised to see Google's welcome message that announces the new navigation interface. If you don't hide the message or click the grid icon, the message is displayed every time you use Google. Apparently, the person next to me used Google to search the web, but he wasn't curios to check Google's app launcher.

Since the new app launcher is hidden, it's likely that less people used it than the old black bar. Google Trends shows that the search volume for queries like [google docs], [google drive], [google news] or [google calendar] increased a lot in September, when the app launcher was released. If the links at the top of the page are missing, the search box saves the day.

Here's a Trends chart that shows the US search volume for [Google Calendar] in 2013 and 2012:

{ Thanks, Jérôme. }

New Google Trends Interface

Google Trends has a new interface that changes how you add search terms and how you compare search volumes. There's still a search box at the top of the page, but its role has been deemphasized. The old interface placed search terms in the left sidebar, while the new UI shows some big building blocks above the chart. Filters have also been moved to the top of the page.

The "Top Charts" page now includes trending charts, not just lists of the most searched topics. There charts for actors, animals, authors, books, cars, chemical elements, cities, colleges and universities, countries, drinks, games, medications, movies, people, scientists, software technologies, space objects, sports teams, TV shows, and more.

The "Hot Searches" section has a calendar view that shows the hottest topics from the past 30 days. It looks nice. "Click the new calendar icon at the top of the Hot Searches page for any of our thirteen supported countries. Hover on a topic for some quick information and a link to see more search trends from the day," informs Google.

{ via Inside Search }

A Google Trends Annoyance

It's sometimes helpful to read some instructions, especially when you use advanced features. What happens when you can't dismiss these instructions and you have to see them every time you use a service?

Google Trends shows an annoying box every time you click the search box: "Explore Trends. Separate terms by commas to compare. Some examples: [GMC, BMW, Honda], [Swine Flu], [Madonna, Adele]."

Google Trends used to display this information on the homepage, but now the homepage shows a list of hot searches.

Here's the old Google Trends homepage:

Google Trends for Subdomains

At launch, Google Trends for Websites didn't support subdomains. Google's service has been updated and you can now use it to find traffic information about subdomains.

"With Google Trends for Websites, you can get insights into the traffic and geographic visitation patterns of your favorite websites. You can compare data for up to five websites and view related sites and top searches for each one. Trends for Websites combines information from a variety of sources, such as aggregated Google search data, aggregated opt-in anonymous Google Analytics data, opt-in consumer panel data, and other third-party market research," mentions Google.



Google doesn't show traffic stats for most of its domains, but you can find information about blogger.com, vevo.com, android.com, chromium.org, googlelabs.com, orkut.com and obscure domains like ggpht.com, googleusercontent.com and gstatic.com.




{ Thanks, TOMHTML. }

Google Hot Trends OneBox

Google started to show an OneBox at the bottom of the search results for the queries listed in Google Hot Trends. The OneBox mentions that a certain query is "#N of 100 most popular searches in the past hour", even though Google Hot Trends doesn't aggregate the most popular searches, which are pretty boring and don't change very often. As Google's blog explains, "Hot Trends lists the fastest rising searches on the web at any given hour".


Google uses the fact that a query is suddenly popular in various ways: for example, to include recent web pages in the list of top results or to show results from Google News and Google Blog Search. Unfortunately, Google Hot Trends doesn't do a good job at explaining why a certain query is popular, so Google should add more real-time news sources like Twitter, Flickr, YouTube.

Google Trends Competition

Using Google Trends, you can compare the evolution of the popularity of different products or brands:

Yahoo Mail vs Gmail vs Hotmail -> Winner: Hotmail, second place: Gmail

XBox vs PSP -> Winner: XBox

YouTube vs Google Video -> Winner: Google Video (but YouTube has a very fast rise)

Winamp, Real Player, Windows Media Player, iTunes -> Winner: Winamp, second place: WMP

Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer, Safari -> Winner: Fiefox, second place: Opera

Digg vs Slashdot -> Winner: Slashdot (Digg has a good evolution and the two news sites are almost equal)

RSS vs Atom -> Winner: RSS

Apple, Linux, Windows -> Winner: Windows, followed by Linux

Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer -> Winner: Bill Gates (by far)

Wikipedia vs Britannica -> Winner: Wikipedia

Google Trends

Google Trends is a new product that lets you see how many searches have been done for the terms you enter. Imagine Google Zeitgeist for any search query. You can find the countries and regions where a search is popular.

You can see the trends for [google browser] query:

You can even compare up to five terms by separating each term with a comma.