Learn how to read Google Trends data effectively, so you can stay ahead of your competitors by targeting new and underserved keywords.
Using Google Trends for keyword research and content planning can give you an edge over your competitors.
Everyone uses traditional keyword research tools, like SEMRush or Ahrefs.
By combining them with Google Trends, you’ll find new and underused keywords that’ll increase your chances of ranking high and getting one-up on your competitors.
You can also use this tool to improve your local SEO, decide if you should create video over written content, identify customer patterns, and more.
However, the type of data Google Trends gives you and the way it displays it can be a bit confusing and hard to interpret.
Here, you can learn how to read Google Trends data — both from Google Trends Trending Searches and Explore — so you can make the most of this tool.
Besides explaining a few key concepts, like what “search terms” and “relative data” mean, I’ll also give a bunch of practical examples to help you fully understand how to use Google Trends.
What Is Google Trends?
Google Trends is a free tool created by Google in 2006 that gives you insights into the relative search interest of search terms and topics.
You can analyze search interest over time not only on Google Search but also on Google Images, News, Shopping, and on YouTube.
How Could Google Trends Be Useful?
Google Trends can be useful for freelance writers, bloggers, marketers, dropshippers, investors, and more since it can be used to:
- Get content ideas and keywords
- Improve local SEO
- Reveal whether video content or written content is more in-demand for a given topic
- Identify customer behavior and patterns
- Perform market research
- Predict trends
👉 If you want to learn more, read How to Use Google Trends for SEO Keyword Research
Google Trends: Trending Searches vs. Explore
With Google Trends Explore, you can get search interest data from 2004 until up to 72h before your search — it allows you to set any timeframe you want.
You can also get insights into individual regions and metropolitan areas, besides countries.
To use this feature, all you need to do is enter a query on Google Trends’ main page.
Google Trends’ Trending Searches gives you information about which topics are being searched the most in real-time (i.e. in the last seven days).
You’ll also find the approximate number of searches, relative search interest, recent news, and precious keywords you can target.
In both cases, you can choose the country you want to analyze.
To browse through the Trending Searches, you need to click the three lines on the left top corner and then choose “Trending Searches.”
How to Read Google Trends Data — Basic Concepts
To read Google Trends, first, you need to understand the differences between:
- Search terms and topics
- Absolute data and relative data
Search Term vs. Topic
➡️ A search term only includes the relative search volume (RSV) for that exact match — word by word, character by character.
It’s the same as a keyword or query.
➡️ A topic includes all search terms about the same concept or entity.
The search terms inside a topic can be wildly different or have simple variations, like misspellings.
On Trending Searches you’ll only find topics. On Google Trends Explore, you can choose between topics and search terms.
Here are a few examples to help you understand the difference between topics and search terms:
Example 1: “how to make plain rice” “how to make rice” ➔ different search terms, same topic
Example 2: “Elon Musk buys Twitter stock” “Twitter takeover” ➔ different search terms, same topic
Example 3 (misspellings): “Google Trends” “Goofle Trends” “Gogle Tends” ➔ different search terms, same topic
⚠️ When performing searches on Google Trends Explore, you should only compare topics with topics and search terms with search terms.
Otherwise, you’ll get unreliable data.
Absolute Data vs. Relative Data
In this section, we’ll look into Google Trends Trending Searches instead of Explore to understand the difference between absolute and relative data.
➡️ Absolute data tells you how many searches a search term or topic got during a given time period.
The only instance where Google Trends shows absolute data is on the Daily Search Trends — albeit unprecise data.
Look at the example below.
On April 21, 2022, the topics “David Bonola” and “Mike Tyson” got over 100k searches, while “Queen Elisabeth” got over 50k — that’s absolute data.
➡️ Now, to understand what relative data means, let’s take a look at the images from real-time search trends below.
It shows a relative search interest of 100.
This means that the highest amount of searches related to that topic in the time frame presented happened at 11 am.
We don’t know how many searches were performed — that would be absolute data.
It could literally be any number.
All we know is that searches hit their highest at that time.
➡️ The next image shows a relative search interest of 33.
This means that at 5 am, there was roughly 1/3 (or 33%) of the number of searches for that topic compared to the number of searches at 11 am (100).
Again, we don’t know how many searches were performed.
To make it easier to understand, let’s see what this actually means in practice:
At 11 am the search interest was 100.
At 5 am the search interest was 33.
33 is roughly 1/3 of 100.
- Suppose at 11 am there were 1,000 searches ⏩ at 5 am there were 330 searches (=1,000*1/3)
- Suppose at 11 am there were 5,000 searches ⏩ at 5 am there were 1,667 searches (=5,000*1/3)
- Suppose at 11 am there were 11,954 searches ⏩ at 5 am there were 3,985 searches (=11,954*1/3)
⚠️ With relative data, we never know the exact number of searches performed.
But after understanding this concept, Google Trends’ graphics are super easy to interpret visually and you can draw valuable conclusions to guide your content strategy.
How to Read Google Trends Data — Examples From Google Trends Explore
Now that you have a good understanding of what relative data is, it’s easy to read Google Trends.
However, on Google Trends Explore, the relative search interest can have a different meaning to the one presented above.
In the previous example, it illustrated how much or how little interest there was in a certain topic over time. But it can also be used to analyze the interest in one topic/search term versus another or between subregions.
I know, it’s a lot to take in!
It’s much easier to understand these concepts by looking at concrete examples. Let’s do it together!
Example 1: Search Term “How to Make Rice”
Over the last 5 years, the search term “how to make rice” has been getting a relatively constant amount of searches, on Google, in the United States.
Searches temporarily peaked during the first COVID lockdown but this is still considered an evergreen topic.
Interest by Subregion
Now, in this second section, there are a few more factors in play, so, let’s take it step by step.
First, you can see that Arizona and Alaska have the same relative search interest.
➡️ Does that mean that this term was searched as many times in the two states? No!
“Each data point is divided by the total searches of the geography and time range it represents to compare relative popularity. Otherwise, places with the most search volume would always be ranked highest. The resulting numbers are then scaled on a range of 0 to 100 based on a topic’s proportion to all searches on all topics.”
— Google
⚠️ This is known as normalized data.
Hence, these two regions with the same search interest — Arizona and Alaska — don’t have the same total search volume.
➡️ Now, let’s compare different states and different search interest values. Search interest peaked in California — 100. Texas got a search interest value of 91.
This means that, after normalizing the data, California got the highest percentage of “how to make rice” searches of all regions.
Texas got 91% of the number of normalized searches in California — again, by comparing the normalized data of Texas.
Rising Related Topics & Queries
If you scroll down a bit more, you’ll find the last two sections of Google Trends — “related topics” and “related queries.”
As I mentioned above, topics include all search queries, including misspellings, within that topic. Queries are the exact keywords being typed on Google Search.
The image above shows rising topics and queries (pink).
Let’s unpack what the percentages shown mean.
➡️ Here’s an example (orange): let’s say there were only 50 searches for the topic “Instant Pot” in the previous time period.
A 3,400% increase means there were 1,700 more searches in the time period you selected — totalling 1,750 searches in the time period you selected.
➡️ “Breakout” (green) means there was a percentage search increase of 5,000% or more.
We’re never told what the exact number of searches was, though.
⚠️ The thing about “rising” topics and queries you need to keep in mind is that it doesn’t necessarily mean there was a huge search volume. It just means it increased a lot, compared to the previous time period.
That was why I used the “let’s say it got 50 searches” above. A 3,400% increase seems massive, but it might not amount to much, in the end.
Top Related Topics & Queries
Now, if you click on “rising” you can choose “top” instead. It’ll show you the most searched topics and queries related to the search term “how to make rice,” in this case.
As you can see, “Rice — Cereal grain” and “fried rice” are the most searched topic and query, respectively.
What does this mean? 🤔
➡️ For every 100 “fried rice” searches, there are 51 “how to make white rice” searches. The search interest in this second query is 51% of the search interest in “fried rice.”
The same logic goes for all other queries and topics.
Example 2: Comparing the Search Terms “Bungee Jumping” & “Rock Climbing”
In this section, I’ll be briefer because I’ve already explained all core concepts before. I’ll mainly read Google Trends data here as examples.
➡️ So, as you can see, the search interest in “rock climbing” is higher than in “bungee jumping” — it peaked between February 20 and 26, 2022.
In that same time period, the interest in “bungee jumping” was 13% of the interest in “rock climbing” — for every 100 “rock climbing” searches, there were only 13 “bungee jumping” searches.
➡️ Let’s look at the search interest for both in a different time period.
Between October 9 and 15, 2022, there were 75 “rock climbing” searches for every 100 “rock climbing” searches performed between February 20 and 26, 2022 — remember that all these values are always relative to the search peak!
Similarly, between October 9 and 15, 2022, there were 8 “bungee jumping” searches for every 100 “rock climbing” searches performed between February 20 and 26, 2022.
Compare Breakdown by Subregion
Google Trends shows you how the relative search interest for those terms compares between subregions.
First of all, by looking at the map, we can see that all states are more interested in “rock climbing” than in “bungee jumping.”
Then, I hovered over Nevada to see more detailed data. It showed me that 16% of the total searches for both terms are for “bungee jumping” and 84% are for “rock climbing.”
⚠️ If you compare these values between states, remember that the data is always normalized, not absolute.
Interest by Subregion & Related Queries
The following two sections are similar to Example 1, so I won’t go into a lot of details here.
Instead of comparing between search terms, they give you data about the search interest and related queries for each search term separately.
The state with the highest search interest in “bungee jumping” per 100 inhabitants is Nevada.
If you look at the top related queries, you can see that the most popular one is “bungee jumping near me.”
Below, you’ll find data for “rock climbing.” Utah is (unsurprisingly) the state with the highest relative interest in this search term.
Some rising related queries that got a huge surge in search interest in the previous 12 months include “gavin escobar,” “rock and resole,” and “marc andre leclerc.”
How to Read Google Trends Data — FAQs
Lastly, I’ll answer a few of the most frequently asked questions about how to read Google Trends data.
What Does a Value of 100 Mean on Google Trends?
A value of 100 on Google Trends means that the number of searches was the highest at that time point compared to the whole time period displayed.
In the case of “interest by subregion,” it means the search interest was the highest in that subregion compared to whole region you selected.
All Google Trends values for relative search interest are obtained by dividing the number of searches for that query/topic by the total number of searches of that geographical point or time range.
What Does Breakout Mean on Google Trends?
“Breakout” means that there was at least a 5,000% increase in searches, in comparison to the previous time frame.
This great surge likely happened because there were very few to no searches for that query before.
Are Google Trends Accurate?
Google Trends data is accurate.
However, you need to know how to read and interpret it properly.
It’s especially important that you know the difference between search terms and topics and relative, normalized, and absolute data.
How to Read Google Trends Data — Key Takeaways
Reading Google Trends data is easy — especially for those who prefer visual representations to plain numbers.
You just need to understand a few basic concepts, like “search terms,” “queries,” “topics,” “relative search interest,” and “breakout.”
Once you get a hold of those, Google Trends becomes your playground.
In the current hyper-competitive SEO landscape, leveraging this tool can definitely take your content strategy to the next level and get one-up on your competitors.
Don’t overlook the power and usefulness of this Google tool.
If you need more help creating SEO-friendly content, download my SEO Blog Post Checklist 👇
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