How to Use Google Trends for Market Research

Market research is crucial for any business, big or small. However, traditional methods can often be pricey and take a lot of time. Fortunately, the internet has made many market research tools more accessible.

In this article, I’m going to share how I use Google Trends for market research. This tool has been a game-changer for me. It helps me understand market trends quickly and efficiently. Using Google Trends, I can easily track what’s gaining popularity and what’s not, which helps me make informed decisions for my clients and my own business.

What is Google Trends?

Google Trends is a fantastic, free tool from Google that helps you see how often people are searching for specific terms. It compares these searches to the overall number of Google searches over various periods.

I use Google Trends to track how popular certain search terms are over time. It allows me to find related keywords and see how search trends vary across different parts of the world (of course, in combination with other tools like the keyword planner). I can also spot when there’s a sudden increase in searches for a term, usually because something relevant is happening in the world.

Here are four ways I use Google Trends for market research:

1. Use Google Trends to Find Popular Topics in Your Industry

Google Trends is a useful tool for uncovering hot topics in your industry that you might not have noticed. Here’s how you can identify popular topics and search queries relevant to your field:

First, visit trends.google.com.

Step 1: Click on “Explore” to start.

Step 2: Next, choose the Region you’re interested in. You can zoom in on a specific country, state, or even a city — the options are virtually limitless.

Step 3: Select the time period you want to analyze. For broader industry trends, opt for a longer timeframe. If you’re interested in recent topics or queries, go with a shorter duration.

Step 4: After that, pick the Category that matches your field. For instance, if you’re in marketing, you’d select the “Advertising & Marketing” category.

Step 5: Finally, start looking at topics and search queries. You might see items that seem unrelated, particularly in the “Rising” section. This simply shows what else people interested in your chosen category are searching for.

2. Use Google Trends to Determine Seasonal Patterns

Want to see seasonal trends in your industry to optimize your advertising strategies? Google Trends can help.

For example, if you sell boots, you might think they sell better in fall and winter than in spring and summer. Let’s use Google Trends to check if that’s true.

Step 1: Enter your search term. Make sure you enter a search term, not a topic because Google Trends tracks them differently.

Step 2: Next, look at the results and adjust the settings as needed.

For instance, if we’re checking how often “boots” were searched in the last 12 months, we might decide to extend our view to see if these trends hold over a longer time.

Step 3: Now, let’s compare the results. We’ll look at how popular the search term “boots” is compared to something we’d consider the opposite, like “sandals.”

When we check the data, we see that searches for “sandals” go up in summer and down in winter. Also, even when “boots” searches are at their lowest, they’re still more common than the highest point of “sandals” searches. This means that overall, more people in the United States search for “boots” than “sandals” throughout the year. However, these trends could be different in specific areas of the United States.

3. Use Google Trends for Competitor Research

You can also use Google Trends to find out what people are searching for related to your competitors. For instance, you can see which search terms are popular for your competitor right now or were trending in the past.

Here’s how to do it:

Step 1: Enter the name of your competitor. Let’s use “Apple” as an example.

Step 2: Next, choose the region and time period you’re interested in.

For example, pick the area you want to focus on, like a country or a specific region, and decide on the time frame you want to analyze.

Note: If you want to see data from earlier periods, go to the custom time range option.

Then, pick the specific time frame you want to look at. For example, in this case, we selected 3/16/2024 to 4/16/2024.

Step 3: After selecting your time range, take a look at the popular search terms, topics, and trends.

This lets us check what was popular for our competitors before and now. For example, terms like “apple subscription” and “cancel apple subscription” are still top searches in early 2024. However, topics like the Apple encryption dispute aren’t important anymore.

Here’s an idea: You can study different times of the year for your competitor to see if they offer similar things each year. Then, you can prepare and react to them.

4. Use Google Trends to Discover Patterns

Understanding patterns can be super helpful when planning your ads and promotions. Knowing when people search more or less for a certain term can help you predict how your marketing will perform.

Step 1: Enter your keyword. For example, let’s use “marketing”.

Step 2: Next, pick your Region.

Step 3: Then, start looking at different Time Ranges.

Daily patterns: For daily patterns, go to “Custom time range” and select “Past week.”

Let’s uncover any daily popularity patterns.

For this, we’ll use Custom time range > Past week. Google Trends only provides hourly data for the past week, so we’ll need to analyze each day separately.

Weekly patterns: Now, let’s look at weekly patterns. Choose “Past 30 days” and adjust the time range as needed to get a better understanding.

Check if there’s a common decrease in search volume for your keyword on a weekly basis. For instance, with the keyword “marketing,” you might notice fewer searches during weekends.

Monthly Patterns: Now, let’s look at monthly patterns. Set the view to “Custom time range” and select a range, such as from January 1/4/2024 to 1/3/2024. This will help you see if any trends repeat each month.

Understanding monthly patterns can also help you uncover seasonal trends. For example, with our keyword, we might notice slight decreases at the start of summer and a more significant drop during the Christmas period.

Yearly Patterns: Now, let’s explore annual patterns. Set the view to “2020 — present” to get an overview of trends that occur each year.

Analyzing data from 2020 to the present, we notice a decline in search volume for the term “marketing” over the years. Additionally, there are noticeable drops in search volume every December, coinciding with the Christmas period.

Conclusion

I’ve found Google Trends really helpful for understanding what’s going on in my industry. It helps me see what people are interested in right now, notice when certain things get popular every year, check out what my competitors are doing, and spot new trends. This tool has made my planning better because I can see more clearly what customers like and when. Every time I use Google Trends, I learn something new that helps me make smarter choices. If you’re in business or marketing, I really recommend trying it out — it could give you some great ideas for your work!