![]() Those “spikes” are a sudden acceleration of search interest in a topic, compared to usual search volume. This percent increase is based on a topic’s growth in search interest over a distinct period of time compared to the previous period. Understanding the percent increase in a search topic can be a useful way to understand how much rise in interest there is in a topic. Search interest in the BBC’s David Dimbleby’s tie spiked, and people searching for “ getting an Irish passport” also surged by 100%. The first is understanding relative search interest in the topic compared to itself - or what we would call a “spike”.Īs the results came in for the recent EU referendum, Google Trends showed what people were inherently curious about. If we had looked at raw data rather than normalized values, we would’ve seen larger states with higher populations rise to the top of the ranks.īecause Google Trends data is presented as an index, we often get the question: “how important is this?” ![]() This is because of all states, Vermont has the highest percentage of searches for Sanders out of all searches in that state. When we look at regional search interest for a topic, we’re looking at the search interest for that topic in a given region as a proportion of all searches on all topics on Google in that same place and time.įor instance, if we look at the Trends around Bernie Sanders, we can see that Vermont has the highest search interest in the current senator. This means that when we look at search interest over time for a topic, we’re looking at that interest as a proportion of all searches on all topics on Google at that time and location. What’s most useful for storytelling is our normalized Trends data. When we released our 2015 Year in Search, we found there were astoundingly over 439 million searches on Google when Adele came back with ‘Hello’. We also can take the total searches for an event to help understand its sheer magnitude. We can look back and compare different terms against each other, like how different sports have ranked since 2004. Google Trends is a powerful tool for storytelling because it can allow us to explore the magnitude of different moments and how people react to those moments. For example, AdWords is meant for insights into monthly and average search volumes, specifically for advertisers, while Google Trends is designed to dig further into more granular data in real time. But combining data can be tricky - for instance, it doesn’t make sense to compare Google Trends to other Google datasets, which are measured in different ways. As a sample, it gives us a way to analyse what people are searching for in real time as events unfold. It’s a unique and powerful dataset, which can complement others, like demographic data from the census, as shown here in the Washington Post. By sampling our data, we can look at a dataset representative of all Google searches, while finding insights that can be processed within minutes of an event happening in the real world. We take a sample of the trillions of Google searches, because it would otherwise be too large to process quickly. The charts will show you either one or the other, but not both together, because these are two separate random samples. Real time is a random sample of searches from the last seven days, while non-real time is another random sample of the full Google dataset that can go back anywhere from 2004 to ~36 hours ago. ![]() There are two ways to filter the Trends data: real time and non-real time. Use the tool and you can see search interest in a topic or search term over time, where it’s most-searched, or what else people search for in connection with it. You can do it, too - the free data explorer on Google Trends allows you to search for a particular topic on Google or a specific set of search terms. This allows us to measure interest in a particular topic across search, from around the globe, right down to city-level geography. It’s anonymized (no one is personally identified), categorized (determining the topic for a search query) and aggregated (grouped together). Trends data is an unbiased sample of our Google search data. So when a big news story happens, how can you best interpret this data? What is Trends data? Examining what people search for provides a unique perspective on what they are currently interested in and curious about. The vast amount of searches - trillions take place every year - make Google Trends one of the world’s largest real time datasets. What is Google Trends data - and what does it mean?Ī little more than a year ago, we made Google Trends data available in real time and increasingly, it’s helping people around the world explore the global reaction to major events.
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