Google Trends

Google Trends is a useful tool for both personal and professional use. 

I chose Google Trends as my Google tool to explore. With this tool you can find search term trends- from relatively short periods of time such as the course of a few days to trends spanning years- as well as global versus regional search trends. Their database allows you to see the most popular and current news articles. In addition, their search bar feature helps you narrow down your topics of interest to stay abreast of the newest information in your field of choice.

On a personal level it is simply interesting to see current events displayed a functional way (divided by keywords) which allows users to get a birds eyes view of the biggest news stories/trending content world-wide. This takes less time than traditional news/media sources (radio shows, new channels) and allows you to quickly identify and narrow down the aggregate data to further explore a topic you are interested in. I found quite a few interesting articles that I was instantly hooked into reading and felt compelled to share on social media.

In addition to personal interest, I could also see this tool being used in a professional sense- especially in terms of marketing and content curation. For instance, as a beauty blogger, I might use Google Trends to stay on top of the newest products and beauty trends currently circulating. The more interesting news I provide to my network, the more likely they are to follow my blog and visit my e-commerce fashion website which will be advertised on the blog.

The tool was quite easy to use. The search bar is displayed at the top and pre- formulated list of stories from various subject matters are instantly loaded on the home page for quick viewing (as seen below). 

You can also view news by category. Some of the categories include "Business," "Entertainment," "Sci/Tech" and "Health" which can be seen below. 

Using the search bar, I have searched the keywords "makeup" to get the newest trending stories related to makeup:

Here we can see that from within the United States (the default location), individuals from New York google search the term "makeup" the most. Also, the top trending topic related to makeup is the singer Rihanna. 

Due to the ever narrowing gap of social media and marketing, marketers have been utilizing Google Trends to find engaging and popular content in real time that will capture the interest of their audience.

Another related tool that marketers might find of benefit is Google Correlations. This tool is like Google Trends in reverse. You type in your keywords of interest, and it provides you with popular related search terms.

Here are all the search terms that correlate with the keyword "makeup" as seen on Google Correlate: 

I would like my use of Google tools to show my online network that I am not only an expert in my field, but also a worldly person that stays abreast of current events and is someone to follow for materials of interest.

Since Google only uses anonymous data, the search trends will not show any personal data about the people who are doing the searching. Aside from that, you can use a special browser if you are looking for keywords that are not tolerated well by the general public.