Features

Recently launched Google Trends is a very interesting analysis tool that allows you to see how often specific search terms are being entered into the Google search engine.

Up to five terms can be compared. You can also view queries that contain either or two terms, using a vertical bar "|". More advanced queries can be done as well - see the FAQs for details. Google also puts markers next to major news events that are about that search query, helping to explain surges. Data can be sorted by time, language, geographic location, etc.

However, the graph does not have any scale.

When the Cities tab is selected, Google Trends first looks at a sample of all Google searches to determine the cities from which it received the most searches. Then, for those top cities, Google Trends calculates the ratio of searches for the term coming from each city divided by total Google searches coming from the same city. The city ranking you see on the page and the bar charts alongside each city name both represent this ratio, i.e. the percentage of people in that city interested in the term.

Looking at some keywords relevant for KDnuggets, I found that top 6 regions (countries) searching for data mining (www.google.com/trends?q=data+mining), are

1. India
2. Pakistan
3. Indonesia
4. Hong Kong
5. Malaysia
6. Taiwan

Even more suprisingly, the top 6 cities are all in India. That does not mean that more people in India search for "data mining" in absolute numbers, but it does mean that "data mining" represents a greater proportion of searches in India than anywhere else.

Have fun with your keywords!

For more, see www.techcrunch.com/2006/05/10/google-trends-launches/

and

25 Things I Learned on Google Trends, by Steve Reubel.