Google Trends is a free tool that shows the top search queries in Google Search across various areas and languages.
It lets you know the things your audience or customers are curious about. For example, you can see how interest in a topic has gone up or down. Or what terms are being used related to the topic?
It fetches the data from Google Search, Google News, Google Images, Google Shopping, and YouTube, meaning that it has a gigantic database.
Want to check the most popular searches or keywords in recent times? Google Trends can tell you.
This way, it is useful to feel the pulse of your audience.
However, the efficiency of Google Trends can be questioned. After all, it is a free tool. Sure, free things come with their own limitations. There are so many paid or premium tools to choose from when it comes to SERIOUS digital marketing.
Should you rely on the insights of Google Trends?
To help you make an informed decision, here I have outlined the benefits and shortcomings of Google Trends.
What are the Advantages of Google Trends
Identifying the Latest Trends:
Google Trend shows the trending data from several nations. This data can be used to find out the hot topics by the marketers to create content.
Tracking Marketing Performance:
Google Trends also lets you monitor and measure your marketing performance. For example, it shows how much activity or interest is being shown towards your services.
The Search Volume Index is useful to help you discover in what periods your brands or keyword is often looked up, letting you view the peaks of popularity as well as the times when searches were low around your products.
Identifying Areas and Regions of High Interest:
With Google Trends, you can see the regions or areas to check out the responsibilities for the keywords you have researched. This useful insight can help you create effective ad campaigns. Although certain topics might not be popular in one region or nation, they could be trending in another one.
Choosing the Traffic Driven Keyword:
To improve the traffic to your website, an effective SEO strategy is required. Google Trends help you find out what certain words are searched frequently, whilst you can test and measure the success of the keywords.
Checking the Competitor:
Google Trends can be useful in competitor research. Although it doesn’t provide the deepest level of competitor analysis, it can show you how their services or brand is looked up on the search engine.
What are the Shortcomings in Google Trends
Google Trends, apart from its significant benefits, has some flaws. While it shows what search terms are popular, it doesn’t clarify the intention behind those searches.
For example, if we search Online Marketing on Google Trends, the popularity of a phrase can have several meanings. You might not obtain information concerning what data the user searched for, or what information they finally got.
Having a look at the popularity chart, we could conclude that online marketing is growing by leaps and bounds in India.
However, someone else might claim that the increase in the phrase is associated with the digital marketing awareness of internet users.
There is a sheer discord here, which Google Trends cannot deal with. Secondly, Google doesn’t take all search results into account, not adding them to its database.
These are the searches that follow one another and generally have special characters or appear rarely.
Being Limited to Comparing Data:
Google Trends doesn’t tell you the number of searchers. Instead, it only shows that how often people made that query compared to other months of the year. For example, a search query that is used by even a few users at a time can hit 100 at some point in Google Trends. This is not helpful, because apart from knowing whether the query is trending, you have to know how popular it is.
To get the right numbers, you have to use dedicated tools like Google Adwords Keyword Planner or similar tools.
Should You Use Google Trends for Your Digital Marketing?
Hope the above-given pros and cons of Google Trends might have helped you make your decision. It is free and simple to use. While Google Trends helps you identify the trending searches as well as the popularity of the queries across the region/countries, it has its own limitations and flaws.
If you are looking for full-scale online marketing, go for a premium or dedicated tool. Otherwise, there is no harm in giving Google Trends a try.
What do you think? Let me know by commenting below!