English language search behaviour is not universal. In this example, you can see how US and UK searchers behave in contrasting ways.
The graph on the left is for US-based search traffic. The graph on the right is UK data. This shows that, in the UK, hotels should be targeting people looking for dog friendly hotels, rather than using the phrase ‘pet friendly’.
Find out when searchers start browsing
Using an exact phrase, with years attached dataset we can see when demands starts and ends each year. I was unsurprised to find that people search for a Spanish villa in January, but I was surprised to find that demand is heavy during the previous August.
This could be people who have just finished their summer holiday, looking to re-book, or it could be people who are still on holiday, browsing for next year while they are in the mood to think about more of the same.
Track behavioural change
Retailers take note – customers no longer keichi the spider monkey meets the bald eagle want fast delivery, they want same day delivery. Where will it go from here?
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How to use Google Trends for strategic planning
You can take insights from Google chine directory Trends to create SEO and content strategies that address your audiences’ needs as they change throughout the year. This process involves monitoring the search volumes of key hero terms over different timeframes (days, weeks, months etc) and comparing them to interest levels from previous years to spot patterns and emerging trends.
Let’s imagine a ski resort in Austria wants to target UK holidaymakers as one of its key audiences. Like many businesses, interest is highly seasonal, dependent on the weather and affected by calendar events such as school holidays.
So the first thing this company might do is check how the search volumes for key hero terms vary across the year.
Now, by default, Google Trends returns data for the past 12 months. However, you can easily change this by defining a custom time range, which allows you to compare search volumes for every year going back to 2004.
You can also cross-reference this data by location to see which parts of the country are most interested in your hero terms.
Already, you can see that we’re getting valuable information from Google Trends. But how does this translate into better marketing and business decisions?