Using Google Trends To Optimize Your Content Strategy Timing

Key Takeaways

hi everybody this is lauren baker founder of search engine journal and with me today i have louisa fromm of google google trends hey louisa how's it going hello i am doing well happy thanksgiving week happy thanksgiving week i know i see you're outside enjoying it hi this is one of the benefits of living in southern california is that you can comfortably sit outside in a short sleeve dress in november i love it it's the best i might do that afterwards just like maybe not wearing a short-sleeved dress maybe it's just good t-shirt so um great i'm really excited to have you on today i think we met each other years ago at a search journal conference in santa monica correct me if i'm wrong many many moons ago yeah but i you know i've loved search engine journal ever since you guys are my go-to seo resource and i've learned so much from you guys over the years so it's really an honor to be here today fantastic and when we first met you were at l.a times right oh and when we first met that was many many moons ago so yeah and yeah i did just finish at the la times but probably back then that might have even been when i was kind of earlier on in my news seo career so um previously before at the la times um i was at entertainment and yahoo and tmz um and then people magazine entertainment weekly so it could have been anywhere in there i think it might have been around um when i was working at e and that was my first news seo job so that was wow neat yeah when did that start at e yeah so it was an interesting transition originally because you know like many seos um i started in the agency world um and so i worked at a fantastic agency in el segundo um called wpromote so just a giant fan and they've really you know taken off um and i credit wpromote so much with my seo career because they gave me an incredible foundation in both like technical seo and content seo um and really trained me in everything that i needed to know for these other jobs that i would have um so i was at wpromote and that was where it was more traditional e-commerce and like lead generation seo and working on like integrated campaigns um and i really loved it there uh but i had studied news um i've always been a really big fan of news ever since i was you know five years old like you know sneaking people magazine to my mom's shopping cart um and i wanted to get back to it that was what i studied in um college and undergrad i'm at the university of colorado i was a broadcast journalism major there um so i always hoped that i would get back to it even though i didn't immediately pursue it right after graduation i'm in 2012 but then you know i was working at wpromote i ended up kind of like looking into this um seo sort of background and i started to build a career there and you know a recruiter reached out to me um about an seo coordinator role at e um and i remember at the time it was a little bit of a leap of faith um just because you know i loved being in that agency environment and it really was a great fit but you know clearly some things are just meant to happen you have to trust fate because you know that leap of faith that i eventually took um mostly because i knew if i didn't you know try to go for news that i would regret it um really ended up changing the whole course of my life um and now i've been in this you know kind of niche world of news seo um for many years and you know recently transitioned over to google which i would call the mothership you know like within our seo world so it's been an exciting ride it's really interesting too because uh well first of all were you e pre kardashian or post kardashian so i love this question um i was at e definitely like in the thick of the kardashian craze oh like yeah it definitely was you know very very big there um you know you could tell just when you have like a for any sort of like marketing organization or someone who works in marketing when you have like a central sort of you know client or product and that's really what it was there right it was just a driving force behind what they did and i learned so much about that because just the influence that that show can have and the way that you would try to create content around it to kind of bolster the excitement around the show um he you know he was a brand that i had loved my whole life prior to that um and it really gave me an excellent introduction into kind of the wild ways that you know news seo kind of differs from traditional seo um yeah it was it was a very fun part of my career to just kind of get up to speed on news seo best practices there so e you said people right um tmz yahoo la times quite uh an impressive amount of well gossip and entertainment stuff right and then moving on to early times and then um now at google and google trends so just to let everybody know we are going to be talking about google trends today um i am a uh secret admirer of people magazine and tabloids so um my favorite do you want to talk about that for a second so my favorite part of tabloids is obviously celebrities they're just like us it's like pictures of like people shopping in like the fairfax whole foods and stuff like that and they're it's just it's just hilarious so it's amazing that still exists oh my god i love that you mentioned that no that's been one of my my favorite things again ever since i was like a little kid i've always loved it and the way like to briefly comment on that it's like i think it's escapism right you know like a lot of the time what you're reading in these sorts of things it's like you know life can get very difficult and the way i've always viewed it in being a huge pop culture person and entertainment and you know finding joy in the in you know people and other you know publications like that is that it's a nice you know sort of escape um from some of the more harsh realities of the world right to just see like how are celebrities like us for a moment you know that's true that's true and there is a reason i'm bringing this up because it's segmenting in there so when i first started sej and scj was in google news i would do a little bit of news when i got scj into google news i would do so much news like hacking it was crazy right so like i would write like if it was if it was super bowl i would write like all about like i try to sync everything up with google like how to check super bowl scores on google or how to check super bowl scores on yahoo or you know the best super bowl commercials that you can find on youtube and try to tie that in to search and then really like it it would it would just pop on google news instantly right which was at the time you could get away with that um not so much anymore nor would we want to really like pollute the feeds of our readers with that kind of stuff right now but um it was really interesting to me to see like the amount of traffic and it really opened my eyes like the amount of traffic that was available and how it would go up and down this is pre-google trends right so now you're at google and my understanding is you're working a lot on the google trends side of things um but before we get into google trends i just like to give a shout out to our sponsors adzuma and semrush thank you so much adzuma and senrush for sponsoring the show and making this possible and thank you to all of you that have tuned in right now uh we typically do this show on friday afternoons and i will tell you the middle of the day on a tuesday there's a lot more live viewers than typically so this is a really nice test we didn't want to do it on black friday because i'm going to be shopping or sleeping around this time on black friday but if you are currently viewing on linkedin facebook twitter or youtube go ahead take the time to introduce yourself if you have any questions about google trends we have a lot of questions that have come in from our sdj readers ahead of time but for those of you who are viewing live go ahead and ask any questions you may have about google trends or just say hi i see graham alicia peter i feel like i'm in romper room sarah everybody that's currently like leaving comments right now so just say hi we're really excited to see how this all works with the live video streams and okay back to our show so um what are you doing right now at google trends because google trends is very exciting yeah yeah so i mean for a little bit of background there um i have truly been fangirling over this tool um ever since i got into seo um back from you know my agency days and when i was really building my foundation um i had some excellent excellent teachers at wpromote um that i really do love to shout out when i get you know an opportunity um in particular you know andrew mcclellan matt souza um ashley bliss boulter these were some of my like primary teachers and google trends was something that they gave me right away um when they wanted to show me kind of in a very in very simple terms what is seo and what do you need to know about it and how do you need to explain it to clients that we might be working with um and so i really grew to love it right away just coming from an english background and because of the keyword emphasis on google trends where it's all about just like kind of different keyword phrases what are people searching in the moment and this is where i really found my particular sort of niche within seo which was really all about like the word play aspect of it and and making those like ideal headlines um that can really efficiently target the right audiences um so that was really where this started for me just that love that i had and you know working with it in in terms of e-commerce brands and lead generation brands was a lot of fun there was definitely like seasonality with different product lines and things like that and i had fun with that um but really it went to the next level when i went to news seo because google trends is invaluable for news seos i can't stress this enough um once i got into that entertainment zone and i realized how essential it was to get real-time insights we're talking like right now what are people searching i'm just because the news cycle moves like this um google trends really stood out from all of the other tools to me because of its real-time capabilities so going into you know the story feeds um and you know just kind of seeing that like real-time lineup of stories that we could potentially jump on for breakouts but also if we were working on stories on being able to go directly into google trends and look at rising and top queries um to kind of build our content around um was you know absolutely an essential part of my workflow in all of those news seo roles um so you know that was kind of where it started for me and then you know a big part of my job then and all of those roles became training off of that so you learned very quickly working in news seo you can't do it alone um so a big part of you know the job is to get people invested the same way that you are and to basically spread the gospel um and you know create this sort of like army of um you know news seo enthusiasts and that was really what i tried to do in every role that i was in um so training became quickly one of my favorite parts about my job and that's what led me to google trends um you know i was able to sync with somebody um who was on the team um and i really enjoyed just kind of hearing about the background of it and how you know the google trends team puts together what you see on the front end what you guys see on the front end of the tool and that's really what being a google trends curator which is what i am now is all about um we're data journalists it's all about you know mining through so much data um in terms of search queries and you know what people are interested in in any particular time frame um so many it would make your head spin um but you know sifting through that and putting it together in an easy to understand way for the general public um which you know i benefited from immensely when i was on the other side um so now it's a tremendous privilege to get to contribute to that kind of behind the curtain and then that's what let me hear super awesome so i will like just kind of recapping to a degree google trend has been is very useful from a seasonality perspective right the ability to look back over the past year the past five years to see those trends whether they're rising or falling i know for me google trends was very invaluable during the pandemic and during lockdown because i would have clients from time to time that would be like oh how come our traffic's dropped and like um besides there being a lockdown and no one really wanting to go to college right now or whatever it may be and you guys being shut down in addition if you look at the trends via google trends you'll see that since the day that this was announced queries have dropped because no one's really looking for that and then yeah and also digging down on the state level too right because one thing i definitely noticed during the past year and a half almost yeah i guess um two years is that based upon different laws and everything else like some things were open in some and some things were not so you could actually go and compare states where you would see those trends um change and and down to the metro level as well and um it became very valuable that way and also on the flip side so for certain industries that relish during the past year year and a half you would see those trends explode for some terms and then kind of go back to normal over the past year or even drop because everybody spent their money looking for what they got um and then you know from a news perspective we we check it a lot and it helps us even scj like you know black friday cyber mondays this weekend right for example big one yeah super bowl uh internet uh direct to commerce e-commerce super bowl more or less right and what are the trends that happened last year on black friday cyber monday the previous year before any talk about um lockdown or anything else and how does that apply and then how does that grow how can you forecast accordingly um so not just like for news oriented components but also for just like all kinds of different clients and i really really like the way that you can drill down on the local level to pull some of the trend information so that that's really cool as well and we had opened up uh question and answers about google trends uh to our readers uh we have a lot of them but before we jump in you had i think you had said that you're curating data for google trend narratives at the moment or something similar like what exactly are you doing on the google trend side right now sure um so i i can share to a certain extent but essentially you know what what our team is doing like i pointed out um we you know we're big on the data journalism side so we're trying to create resources and helpful you know in addition to just like the google trends front end that you see all the time that you can kind of pop in and search anything that you want um we're always trying to create those modules um that you see so if you get for anyone who's listening right now who's you know kind of used google trends in the past on the home page of google trends that's where you're going to see kind of breakout modules on extra important events that are really capturing a lot of attention so you know right now we have a great thanksgiving module um that's up if you wanted to look around thanksgiving trends um but you know going through the holidays we'll be you know building a christmas module you know the super bowl will get one valentine's day just a lot of these kind of seasonal themes um so i would say that's a big part of it as well is staying on top of even outside of holidays just big topics of interest that people would be into um so i would say you know around the time of you know the george floyd um you know kind of news that was happening um in 2020 we had an excellent you know black lives matter module that was really breaking down those trends that people should know about and how you could incorporate that into your content and to effectively connect with audiences on that um so that's a big part of what we do is you know kind of putting in that time to create those modules that you can directly take things from on that note um i would also really stress within google trends for anyone who's using it and just for anyone in seo in general um but specifically news seos um google trends will really help you especially in the rising queries to find those breakout questions that people are searching for um in my news seo career i really found that you know really keeping things as simple and straightforward as possible with news headlines um could be very helpful so especially when people were in urgent need of information say on covid related things um you know one of my you know kind of standout examples of that was doing a very simple story on you know when when am i getting my stimulus check just keep it very simple in your headline target that to what people would search and then know that you know you're effectively connecting with that audience and not trying to over complicate it that's one way and that you know you could find directly in like a covid module um that we had had you know like back then um so that's just another thing that i mentioned about how google trends can be helpful but generally go back to the beginning of your question we're doing those modules that's definitely a big thing just in terms of like forecasting knowing these big recurring events that will keep coming up and also any big breakout topics taking the time to really sift through you know the query data and you know express that in an easy to understand way with these breakout topics that people can jump on um but then also on a regular basis you know we put out a daily newsletter that's fantastic um you know i would encourage anybody who's interested um to sign up for that um because that'll give you a curated um you know kind of feed on a daily basis monday through friday of you know what are the biggest trending topics of the day um i curated that myself um and that's a great resource as well that our team puts together um and then really apart from that just you know a lot of like one-off requests things that you know different organizations might be interested in and helping people to really you know make sense of you know the wild world of search data and how you can most effectively translate you know these search queries into you know effective impactful content but i hope that kind of amazing that was incredible and i'm looking at the homepage of google trends right now and it is just full of information thanksgiving 2021 latin grammy awards it looks like reggaeton was trending um as well urban dictionary there's an urban dictionary like social media challenge going on look up your name in urban dictionary grammys everything across the board so it's it's really cool it's really cool for forecasting super excited to hear what you're putting together and what's going on right now um and like i said we have a lot of questions that have come in so are you ready for these questions let's go i'm ready all right let's do it so is there a way that you advise using google trend data for forecasting in future content yeah so i i was excited when i saw this question um you know a common um question that i would get from writers and editors when i was working as a news seo strategist really any kind of seo strategist strategist but in particular in news um would be you know say you have halloween coming up um and you know you already have five pieces of content that are in the pipeline that are being planned um but you want to know you know when does interest in halloween really start to tick up and i know you had kind of hinted at this with love but you were saying lauren and it was completely on point um but i love that sort of graph view that you get in google trends when you look up a particular topic like that because you know thankfully user behavior on certain things can be a little bit predictable right you know around halloween interest tends to spike around the same time every single year you'll see that when you do a standalone search um so one way i think it can be helpful for you know forecasting and maybe like content planning and if you're trying to you know set a schedule for publishing is to look at that and then be able to see like okay we know we have like five pieces of content that we want to roll out in connection with halloween we don't want to throw them all up at the same time but once you know what around like what range and google trends will tell you that it's very cool um you know what range is you know kind of the prime target you can space out your content accordingly around that so i think that's really helpful um you really got ahead of me on this one lauren because you were already pointing out some of the you know benefits of you know forecasting um how you can see every single year what are things in that top queries section that are going to trend because i mean those tend to stay pretty consistent so it's really helpful to look at the top queries in that way but also look at rising queries um you know i i really love that when maybe you don't have your content planned yet but you want to know what's bubbling up in interest that's really the difference between top queries and rising queries is that the top queries stay quite a bit more consistent they're just this is the term that like you shouldn't be without ryzen queries is essentially like the trending queries you know like that shifts a lot more frequently and that's where you can get kind of a breakout idea that maybe every other competitor hasn't covered yet so it's a little bit more unique and that's where oftentimes you know i would find like great kind of q a type queries those would be like kind of breakout questions that people had um so i highly recommend like utilizing both of those types of queries to your advantage and but in particular yeah definitely look at the trend line um just so you can see around these topics a little bit harder obviously with like a breakout thing that is just happening but if it is something where there's some of that you know predictable nature to it it's it's really invaluable to go in and check it and then plan your content accordingly around what that graph says and what the queries say amazing amazing i cannot wait until we transcribe this uh podcast because i think we're gonna have some really really valuable pieces upon google trends for scg so really really cool um what about in terms of like uh utilizing google trend data to influence new product development in a competitive space such as dietary supplements or use supplements in general like what kind of data from google trends can really be used uh to innovate on the product level and then grow that in the marketing in the future so again for this particular one i would go back to the rising queries um because i think that's where you're going to find the exciting new angles on something um that you might be able to then transfer into product development and into like further development you know down the line just in general um so if you were you know to do just a scandal and search around dietary supplements and then you saw in the rising queries that there was a particular type of you know benefit that someone wanted from a dietary supplement it's like a new trending sort of you know like point of interest then you could maybe you know refer that back to your product team and be like okay it looks like people really want to de-bloat because it's the holidays right like people are especially interested in deep loading and we need to come up with like you know off of this data that we're seeing you know this is going to really get us into the new year and then we're going to connect that right with always there's always a trend every new year of like let's get back into the gym you know like we all do it um so say you were to see that right now maybe that could influence future product development because you could see okay we know that people are you know especially interested in deep loading and we're gonna refer that back to our product team and say we can you know show you this chart this shows that say interest is spiking like three thousand percent around you know deep loading right now and then you can maybe come up with a new product off of that and directly connect with you know kind of the evolving interests of your consumer um so that's just like one way that i would take it but i think that could apply to a lot of different products and really the value is in the rising queries on that one and because that's where you're going to find those little nuggets um that show you know how is my audience how how are my audience preferences you know kind of evolving right now and how can i tap into that that's awesome yeah i'm gonna make it a point actually i'm gonna look on up deep loading right now i totally said that just off the top of my advert oh i'm on google trends and i'm looking at bloating it defaults for the past 12 months i'm gonna put it at five years i really like doing that to kind of get an idea so um bloating wow bloating peaks on july 4th i guess the amount of of beer being drinking on july 4th i'm surprised i can tell you though diets i was going to say diets and like dieting probably peaks around the new year um so maybe if it wasn't if it wasn't bloating um maybe but i mean that would just go for any dietary supplement but um yeah i mean diet sites probably just because everyone's always or like you know fitness and there's always that sort of trend around the world so diets the lowest amount the lowest amount of trend data and we'll get into this in a second and from a numbers perspective we're in the 30s uh in november as a whole there's a little bit of peak the week after thanksgiving right yeah probably and then it dives um heading into new year's the week after new year's is the peak for the year so it generally takes a week because i think people are still partying right they're still live oh yeah doing this doing that you know and they're like oh yeah i'll start my resolutions next week and then that next weekend is through the roof so um the week after new year's diet or dieting actually a little bit less last year i guess people weren't going out as much but the week after new year died or dieting hits it's 90 or something percentile and then is in the hundreds um but then yeah interestingly enough in december we're down at like 33 38 so [Music] what does that mean because i've had a lot of people ask me this like what's the difference between a 30 and a 90 when it comes to google trends sure so it's it's very like straightforward i also understand how it's a little a little bit vague um but generally the way you want to view that chart is just in terms of like general interest um so if you're seeing something i mean basically on any given search there should be a peak of some kind that's where it's going to hit 100 because there's some sort of you know peak for it um but really what you want to do is just view that as general interest so if you're seeing it you know swooping up that's when you know it peaked in interest and apart from that you know the lower end of the spectrum that that would be the opposite description so that's that's how i've always viewed it and i can't really go into more detail than that um just from the back end side of it but um but generally just view that um with like as in general interest um and so the higher that you're seeing that number go up that's on you know the left and that would indicate more interest than if it's lower that would indicate less interest great that's really really good to know so the next question that came in um is if you search on a specific topic on google trends what's the best way to find related questions people are asking on google or improve the seo of the related content that you can create so what's a good way of like going beyond keywords like i guess head terms and getting deeper into long tail utilizing google trends yeah so you know i'm going to start to sound like a broken record just because i'm such a big believer in it but um i would probably go back to rising queries with this um it's just it's super valuable and that's where you're going to get some of those like one-off sort of breakout ideas um is looking in the rising queries and for you know a certain topic that you might be looking around that's where i found a lot of those things so say first off because this seemed to be very like question oriented if you wanted to jump on those things that's a good way to go um also a fun kind of hack for the front end i would say is that sometimes if you go into like the almighty powerful search bar that's where you can just search for anything right on google trends um you can always try this just you know type in whatever you know kind of word you're interested in or phrase and then add in like a what or a how and just see if something does get connected to it and that you know it's not that doesn't work 100 of the time but i would say sometimes that could pull in you know some interesting queries so that's one other way you can go about it if you want questions um and then also i really can't stress enough those modules um that are definitely handmade you know with love by the google trends team uh those you know can be very question driven so that's where you're going to see just like the straightforward breakdown you can directly extract something from in there and build a piece of content off of it um so those are some of the key ways but i would say just for like the broad seo audience um typing in a topic and then looking at the rising queries um is probably where you're going to be able to zone in on questions most effectively and also is there a huge difference between the data that's given or the information given between keyword planner or even on some uh seo keyword uh research tools such as semrush for our sponsor um and the uh the keyword trend data given via google trends so i really think the biggest difference between these tools um because i i've definitely used google keyword planner semrush a lot of other fantastic seo tools that are out there um for me it's the real time insights that you're getting from google trends that just sets them apart from everything and when you're looking on an evergreen sort of basis so you're looking at like the 12 months five months other things where like there can be a duplicate version of that on these other tools that's where it's going to be more similar but i think really where you're going to see that difference and that boost and the added benefit of google trends is if you want that like real time and this again in particular this is invaluable for news seos if you're in like a breaking news scenario and you need what are people searching for in the last hour um that's really google trends that's going to give you that um so i would say that's the biggest distinguishing factor is that if you need that like last hour last four hours um last day um if you need those sorts of insights that google trends is gonna be able to give you that on the more evergreen scale because this is where i would you know use like semrush and you know some of these other tools that will be like more comparable um you know to what you would see in google trends but really the real time you know very like short time frame that's that's the money um for google trends i would say and are there also ways that people can be notified get alerts about google trends and um you know the big thing too is that for the alerts is there a way to set up them up so they're country specific as well sure yeah so i love google alerts i mean that's that's what everyone should do um in particular you know just working in news when you knew that there were certain topics that you were going to be focused on and in particular like being at the times recently like maybe things like los angeles california just wanting to be alerted on things like that um or in particular like public figures you can really do like anything that you would want um signing up for google alerts is very easy i believe it's just google.com alerts and that's where you can actually like enter in a topic you include your email right there and then you can get pinged when different things are happening so definitely suggest that um but you know i already mentioned it our newsletter is fantastic if you just want a curated feed of you know kind of taking out the guesswork what are the top topics of today um i highly recommend signing up for um you know for our newsletter especially if you you know work at a place where you're you kind of have that emphasis on like the trending news cycle and you want to incorporate that into your content and i can provide that link and you know to anyone who would want to reach out if they want it um but that's where you're going to get you know just those straightforward insights and so that you don't have to go into the tool and kind of do the digging around and and a lot of those can be directly applied to content afterwards um so i'd say between the newsletter and then google alerts um those are great ways to stay on top of you know kind of what's happening right now um with different topics you might be interested in awesome and you know in in the comment fields i do see that keith good chimed in and uh said that water pill sales probably go up so i did going back to bloating um i never [Music] speaking of bloating so uh water pill queries this is like 100 like i would not have thought about this this is a great example of the information you can find going down the google trends rabbit hole so uh you know um water pill water pill trends start to peak in may right so this is purely a bikini season and i'm going like male and female here bikini season so like this is a bikini season trend that starts in may um water pills peak in may oh no wait sorry um april april may and then really catch on in july so if i compare that to uh bloating what did i say before bloating really peaks around july 4th which which is kind of interesting lots of barbecues lots of barbecue lots of bloating so i'm gonna do an and and i really um i really uh recommend that when someone is doing google trends data to compare different queries so i'm typing bloating in right now and google trends is also giving me suggested terms so loading bloating search term flatulence as a topic yes bloating a functional disorder and then lactose intolerance right really interesting so i'm going to compare bloating and flatulence so flatulence also flatulence peaks this week during thanksgiving so that's it so um you know for those of you that are offering uh supplements that help with flatulence or maybe uh airspray or something like that um and i don't know if that's a travel thing or what right because there's a little bit more of that that happens on an airplane than in uh normal life but yeah that's so and then uh the peak mississippi is the peak state for flatulence um i do always find it interesting when you can see which states search for what like um you know just earlier this week i was looking around like thanksgiving traffic right um because in particular in california we're really we're very well known for having like some of the worst thanksgiving traffic in the country and i was seeing that like breakdown and yeah we were definitely in the top five but yeah definitely utilize um you know as you pointed out that regional sort of you can click into it you can you know sometimes get you know unique interesting searches off of that um yeah and that can give you some added perspective so and then speaking of california and traffic so um i see the same image shared year after year after year of like the traffic on the 405. i know what you're talking about like it's all the lights it's the red lights like the parking lights and the brick lights on one side and the headlights on the other it's actually a really beautiful picture but um i drove from newport up to santa clarita yesterday traffic was not that bad yet i'm not even going to touch the 405 tomorrow though but um another good way to utilize google trends in addition to looking at seasonality with peaks and balances year after year you can also look at trends that are tapering off so when i was searching for bloating on water pills um google trends also uh for related queries had keto and keto diet so this is really interesting so i searched i i clicked on the keto diet query and it looks like keto peaked in 2019 january of 2019 was the peak of all keto right it has diminished down to almost nothing right now which is really interesting to me because like if if i was a supplement company or maybe a health site or something like that that would tell me that hey keto is tapered off now people don't stop dieting right like this is like an ongoing trend so any ideas what may be uh hot right now um in terms of diets um i'm trying to think plant-based sweetest one i don't know if i've like heard about one that's kind of super hot right now um so i'm gonna compare these i mean maybe intermittent i mean it's not even super hot like right now but it has been you know kind of hotter than last year but like intermittent fasting i know is one that people have been talking about a lot i'd be i'd be curious i'm not sure but um that is one that people have talked about yeah i wish that i i could um actually want to look into i wish i could share my screen uh but it doesn't really work very well with the multi-streaming so it's really interesting so i think first of all to your point intermittent fasting peaked in 2020. january 2020 was intermittent fasting right uh i also added plant-based diet which has had gradual growth but between november 2019 and february 2020 there's a lot of plant based yeah i'm going to chalk that up to the playmakers uh no no the game changers documentary on netflix right yeah game changers documentary came out in october 2019. so and that's another thing too is that one thing that i really like utilizing google trends for is i like matching that up with real-world occurrences that are influencing search which is really important right because we like to i think in the world of seo we get into keywords and we look at numbers search volume search volume search volume search volume but going back to even the urban dictionary look up your name challenge right so i see the urban dictionary is trending right now i also saw um in the citrix reports for winners and losers from the google core update this month that urbandictionary.com was one of the winners i'm not sure if that is a because of the google the november core update or this urban dictionary challenge that's going on right now because i know from my years in seo the more people utilize this site the higher it gets in the rankings and exactly i'm not sure if you can comment on that or not given your new job but yeah be careful there it is really interesting to match up the trends accordingly because i know in the world of seo it's very easy for us to just make an assumption right hey there was a core update hey urban dictionary is at the top therefore google is rewarding sites like urban dictionary and the next thing you know everyone's going out and putting a dictionary on their site right but there's also a huge urban dictionary challenge going on right now it's one of the top trending searches on google trends it's one of the top uh trends on twitter facebook and then everywhere else right now and then when i go to instagram i'm seeing everyone looking up their names so whoever thought this up at urban dictionary to drop an urban dairy look up your name in urban dictionary challenge right now genius i hope you i hope you all put that together internally if not even better you have like the community at large putting together this campaign for you and it's at the point right now where it's like even confusing seos right is this because of uh the core update or is it because everyone's going to the site and looking up their names so really really interesting stuff um louise it's been a very very nice 40 minutes we're approaching the 45 minute mark right now is there any are there any other tips you would love to give in terms of the world of google trends how it can be utilized and then as a whole like i have a question so that's right you're working for google right now you're you're working virtually is that how it's worked at work yeah 100 remote very cool very cool so any other like last minute tips that you can give on utilizing google trends for the uh for the holiday season and or the new year's transition in the 2022 and or any specific statements or questions that you've seen in the comments today sure i'm so i got unfortunately i haven't um seen the comments coming through just through my view um oh actually let me click into that i'm happy to answer any of these oh i just saw this um great uh but to kick things off just to kind of you know summarize the value of google trends and i think what you know i hope everyone who's been listening and thank you for listening um can get from this particular chat and it breaks down into a few different you know kind of capabilities of the tool on that i think everyone should focus on so when you're you know looking at the home page i'll just kind of go through the homepage you start things off with that search bar really utilize that search bar to your advantage you can look up any term that you would be interested in in that search bar and that can you know start just like a world of possibilities and brainstorming after that um and then this had been touched on but the comparison kind of capability that you get once you go into a standalone search really utilize that um because a big kind of like just seo thing that i've learned um is that you don't want to make assumptions in seo that it's like oh of course this would be the top term because like yes we all kind of have our ideas but what i love about google trends and how it's really benefited me is that if you have those ideas in particular this was really beneficial for me in breaking news scenarios where you're trying to figure out what is the top way that someone is like referring to a big event it is critical that you get the top you know kind of wording around that event correct and so if you have a few different ideas that you're seeing online use that comparison tool put those in there put in the correct date frame and and then you can really zone in on the you know perfect target keyword and that can drive your content after that so i would say just the search bar that comparison capability the regional um you know side of it we touched on that a lot so if you are you know kind of more locally targeting your content i'm really clicking into that i must say you don't always get you know the perfect queries from that but i think it's always worth checking just to see what's popping in interest locally and and then yeah the rising queries and the top queries on individual searches um you know the rise in queries is really the you know trending queries that's where you're going to get those you know really like just money breakout items that you can directly transfer into content that can really directly connect with what your audience cares about um so please keep that in mind always remember just keep it very short and simple and straightforward that's what you know kind of the name of the game is for us in seo um and then you know top queries again in those kind of scenarios where i just need to know what term can i not be without um and you know whatever it might be that's really where you want to look those won't shift as much um and then going back to the homepage you know i love the real-time stories feed um for any news seo who might be on this call that is invaluable um because you're getting just like a real scroll feed that you know updates you know frequently that's showing you okay what do people care about right now you have a clear line graph that's showing you where the interest currently is and you have you know just direct topics that you can jump on and work you know kind of into your workflow um so highly recommend utilizing that and then on the modules um again these are really made with love and care and from the team on our side um and this can really help anybody going back to your question about the holidays and the new year we're going to have modules um up for the rest of those so we have one up for thanksgiving right now um but you know we'll we'll be building out ones for you know christmas and you know new year's and we'll continue to do that throughout the year so for anybody who's been on this call if you you know and really i think everyone would um no matter what your product is if you have that seasonal sort of interest and you just want to know around any particular recurring sort of event what do people care about what always pops in interest what could i do for breakout you know kind of content um look at those modules those will really help and they'll broaden your perspective around certain topics and then i got to give a shout out um it's been really cool to actually be a part of this this year but you're in search um that one is very fun it's a giant project that the google trends team does um and you know like definitely look at that if you just want like big you know kind of you know just perspective on what were the biggest topics that people cared about this year if you're kind of a nerd for this stuff on the way that i am um you can really get some interesting insights from that just in seeing like what was user behavior like in the last year and how could that potentially influence where users will go in the future so that will be landing very soon um definitely take a look at you're in search um and yeah just keep an eye on you know that home page for any other modules that come up because we also do them for you know breaking news topics too so like i mentioned with the black lives matter um you know any sort of big sort of topic of interest that might pop up um we will do our best to break it down into user-friendly queries and that you can translate over to your content um so yeah and then the newsletter definitely sign up for the newsletter if you want to know more about the world of google trends um and the work that we do cool we'll find the link to the newsletter and drop it um on the show and in this recap by the way i did have a um first of all i feel like i'm on a google trend show right now so it's been amazing kind of talking to you about this and learning so much more about google trends um and it's so topical for it's so trending for where we are right now too at the end of the year to your point i love the year in search i've loved it forever i'm very nostalgic like that like when there's something at the end of the year and you look because you know how it is like it feels like we're hustling all the time or you know doing this doing that all the time and you look back you're like oh wow the year's really going by and then you get like one of these like uh the zeitgeist reports of the year in search or whatever you're like oh i remember oh yeah that happened then oh yeah so that's always really interesting also i i'm totally like into this this diet queries right now people trying something yes it was random right but i liked it we had a lot of a lot of recommendations on diet queries so gluten-free and i added vegan intermittent fasting plant-based and one thing i have noticed is that typically there is that peak that happens in new year's for every single year for all of these didn't happen so much going into this year um interesting maybe because like not going back into the office or something but the consistence right keto has totally fallen off the chart um intermittent fasting is kind of below keto a little bit but it's consistent it hasn't really had the peaks and valleys i would have i would have thought but gluten-free is making a comeback right now and gluten-free i think of that as like a trend from a year or two ago so gluten-free is making a comeback and then um uh and and has been very consistent for the past five years and then uh vegan i don't know if that's a diet like all these are kind of like lifestyles but and or whatever but vegan had its peak as well 2019 going into 2020 and is making a slow comeback as well so interesting how many of you are out there for sure it definitely has um i was just looking through um some of the comments so i apologize that i caught up late um but i did at least want to clear up this one because um i know i had mentioned it quite a few times so when i was referring to kind of like break out queries um there are two different ways to look at that so there is specifically something that you'll see in rising queries where it will say break out this comes ahead of the other queries that you'll see in there that have like a plus sign and a number amount percentage um so breakout really does mean that you know this is brand new like it's something like that's just breaking um and the timeliness aspect is really big to it when i was referring to breakout queries in general i was kind of it was it was almost like synonymous with the rise in queries so i apologize for any confusion there um but the specific breakout qu