Why Google Trends is one of the best keyword research & SEO tools
Above all, there’s one core reason to use Google Trends for SEO: there’s a massive first-mover advantage in SEO. While great content is crucial, getting backlinks and traffic early on helps you rank, which gets you more backlinks and traffic, and so forth.
And in order to spot these opportunities you need 1) real-time data 2) over time.
Real-time Data
For anything real-time (news) or even moderately new (product releases), data from most SEO tools is practically useless.
For instance, this third-party case study shows how in January 2023, top third-party SEO tools, like SEMRush, showed ChatGPT as having zero search volume - when it had already been featured in every major newspaper and mentioned over half a million times on Reddit and Twitter.
On the other hand, Google Trends detected ChatGPT’s spike in interest in real-time.
Learn more about the accuracy of Google Trends.
Over Time
Additionally, while most SEO tools offer just a single monthly estimate, Google Trends reveals the trajectory of search interest over months, years, or even decades.
It’s like the difference between knowing a stock is $100 versus knowing it’s $100, up from $50 a year ago.
The latter not only tells you where you are, but shows you the momentum behind it. As we’ll see later in the guide, this is crucial for making informed, strategic decisions that can make or break your SEO success.
Learn more about Google Trends' time series data.
Additional Advantages
There are many advantages to using this unique data set for SEO, including but not limited to:
Customizable Queries: Users can explore keywords based on their own curiosity, not on select terms that are pre-curated, as is often the case with other trend analysis tools. This allows for true exploration and discovery of high-potential keywords.
Unrestricted Queries: While Google Ads prohibits certain subjects like cryptocurrencies, alcohol, and medicine, Trends provides unrestricted access to all keywords. Unfortunately, many trend analysis tools only rely on Google’s Adwords API to gather search data, therefore providing limited insights.
Massive Scale of Data: Google processes trillions of searches annually, making the dataset extremely large and diverse. This also means there’s less bias towards a single demographic, so a given analysis is far less likely to be skewed.
The Most Honest Data: Data from Google Trends captures genuine user interests and concerns that are not typically shared in other data sources. Many consumers say they’re more honest with Google search than with their own spouse, which means Google Trends provides insights that we wouldn't be able to spot in, for instance, social media data.
In this guide, we'll walk through how to use Google Trends for SEO with an example end-to-end project, from choosing a topic to measuring performance. Let's get started.
(If you aren't familiar with Google Trends, get up-to-speed before jumping into this guide.)
Step 1: Choosing the right topic
A significant portion of our success or failure in SEO hinges on the topics we choose to write about. To maximize our chances, we should focus on topics that are gaining interest (i.e., trends) rather than those that are losing relevance.
We can apply this principle at various scales, from launching an entirely new site to including a particular keyword in a post. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll focus on the former, but keep in mind that it's not the only way.
To begin, we'll highlight the risk of not using Google Trends.
The risk of not using Google Trends
Let's imagine we are a nutritionist that has decided to start a blog without using Google Trends for keyword research.
We decide that the keto diet will be a content pillar given our existing knowledge and its popularity, and begin to use tools like SEMRush, Ahrefs, and others to perfect our keyword strategy, information architecture, alt tags, and more.
We even think to validate interest in the keto diet with SEMRush’s trend analysis chart:
SEMRush's trend chart for "keto diet"
Looks stable enough, right?
Convinced of the opportunity, we start pumping out content, not letting the difficulty ranking deter us as we understand that SEO is an investment that takes months, if not years, to pay off.
However, despite our efforts, there’s a problem: nobody cares about keto anymore.
Using Google Trends, we see that if we had been building this blog in 2016, then we’d be setting ourselves up for quite the ride. But not in 2024.
Now, the only thing we’d be doing is fighting for scraps in a decaying, highly-competitive market that will be even smaller than it was when we started, and that much closer to extinction.
The lesson here is that even the most advanced tactics won’t make up for a bad market, and that most SEO tools are ill-equipped to flag one.
A better approach
Let’s flip the scenario. Imagine we’ve discovered the “next big thing,” like a new version of the keto diet that’s just starting to gain traction. By identifying it early, we can establish ourselves as an authority and ride the wave of its growing popularity all the way to the top.
Sounds great, but does a “new keto” even exist?
While interest in keto has been falling for the past 5 years, the “carnivore diet” has been climbing more and more rapidly over the same period.
If we based our SEO strategy on this topic, or at least included it, we could get most of the advanced tactics wrong and still grow simply because of the roaring demand for the underlying topic.
Try it yourself: Input your core topic(s) into Google Trends to view the interest over time.
How to spot trends
How did we spot the carnivore diet trend?
Well, to be honest, we cheated. We used Glimpse, a Chrome extension that enhances Google Trends, and simply looked up “keto diet” in its Discover Trends feature where it was the second result among dozens of other nutrition trends:
While the focus of this guide is on Google Trends, we’ll reference Glimpse where relevant to highlight additional insights.
However, aside from using tools like Glimpse, there are a couple other ways to find trends:
Social media: Platforms are full of trending topics, but many are fads rather than lasting trends (we’ll discuss the difference below). Some platforms, like TikTok and Pinterest, even offer trend dashboards, though these often highlight short-lived movements as well.
Google or AI: You can use prompts like, “What are 10 nutrition trends similar to the keto diet?” to generate topic ideas for further exploration.
Note that even when an LLM like ChatGPT has recent data, they still:
Don’t have a sense of scale or trajectory, so they may recommend topics that are actually declining
Are designed to produce average results, missing under-the-radar opportunities
Hallucinate, or generate incorrect or misleading information
For a systematic approach to using these tools to discover trending topics, see our guide on using Google Trends for product research & eCommerce.
Try it yourself: Compare related trends to your core topic to see if there’s a faster-growing option that may be worth exploring.
Differentiating trends from fads
While it’s clear that the carnivore diet is growing, how do we know for sure that it’s a long-term trend worth basing our strategy on and not just a fad?
First of all, we don’t. That’s the risk of trying to get ahead of the curve.
However, after consistently spotting trends like TikTok, OnlyFans, pickleball, and others before they became the cultural movements they are today, we’ve crystalized a few criteria in Google Trends results that indicate a topic is likely to continue growing exponentially.
Note: these graphs are from the Glimpse extension, which adds the absolute monthly volume, year-over-year growth, and a trend line that adjusts for both the seasonal and noise components.
1. Continuous increase in search interest over a multi-year time horizon, especially the past year. Here’s an ideal trajectory.
a. Flatter trajectories like this can seem promising, but are unlikely to build enough momentum to start a meaningful wave soon:
2. Avoid “rollercoasters” like this as they’re usually not organic growth, but rather impermanent boosts in interest from a media event or advertising campaign:
a. This includes trends like this that show momentary spikes in interest, yet a flat trajectory overall:
Examining the graph for carnivore diet with this criteria in mind, it seems likely that demand will continue to climb over an extended period of time.
Try it yourself: Analyze the trajectory for your keyword of interest. Does it meet the criteria for a stable trend? If not, see if you can find a related keyword that does.
Determining potential size and competition
Now that we’ve confirmed that the carnivore diet is a stable trend, it’s time to determine how big of a movement it could realistically become.
Again, there’s no telling for certain, but if we use keto as a reference and compare the two in Google Trends, we see two positive signs.
Interest in the carnivore diet is still less than 20% of keto’s 2018 peak.
The former surpassed the latter for the first time just this month.
When looking at the carnivore diet graph alone, it’s easy to worry that we’re nearing peak popularity. However, comparing it to keto reveals that the carnivore diet is likely still in its early stages. If it gains traction similar to keto, search demand could grow over 5x in the coming years.
Establishing a strong presence now, while competition is low, means we don’t need to stress over perfecting every tactic. Exact SEO techniques become more crucial when a market is saturated and everyone’s competing for the top spot.
But in a growing, unsaturated market, we can build authority and ride the wave simply by consistently creating valuable content and optimizing for the main keywords.
How low is the competition exactly? We can quantify it by comparing the costs-per-click in Google Ads' Keyword Planner:
While the lowest we could pay for “keto diet beginner” is $0.74, we could spend as little as $0.06 targeting “carnivore diet beginner.”
At its current rate of growth, carnivore diet bids may approach that of keto sooner rather than later, which means that getting in now would be both cheaper and less competitive.
Try it yourself: Compare your keyword to a related past trend to see how much more growth might remain.
Step 2: Planning our content calendar
Reassured that the carnivore diet has plenty of room for growth, let’s plan when to launch our content.
We could work to get it out ASAP, releasing in just 2 weeks on November 1. Should we do this? We can use Google Trends to answer this by examining the seasonality of interest in the carnivore diet.
While searches have been more erratic in the past year, the data shows that demand typically stays flat or drops in the months leading up to New Year’s, likely as people let loose over the holidays. On the other hand, there is a recurring spike every January, likely due to New Year’s resolutions and a renewed commitment to health.
To make pulling these insights easier, Glimpse has a dedicated module to detect and display any seasonality:
Since search engines both favor fresh content and use early engagement metrics to determine its ranking, we should spend the next couple months creating, then launch slightly before New Year’s to have the most engagement possible.
Additionally, knowing that many people will be consuming our content in the context of their New Year’s resolutions, we could tailor it in a couple ways:
First, we could provide the most up-to-date information on the carnivore diet, such as the newest research on its effects and efficacy. We could hint at this information with a title like, “Ultimate Guide to the Carnivore Diet (2024 Edition)”, assuring searchers it is up-to-date and likely scoring a higher clickthrough rate.
Second, we could also speak to their underlying goals behind searching for information on the diet. For instance, rather than creating a guide only on the technical definitions of the carnivore diet, we could include tips on switching to the diet in-line with New Year’s resolutions and the psychology behind behavior change.
Not only would this answer people’s immediate questions, but it will show them that we understand why they are searching for information on the topic, and therefore that they can trust us to guide them to where they want to go.
Try it yourself: Analyze the seasonality of your keyword to spot the best times to promote your content and brainstorm ways to tailor it given the context.
Step 3: Tailoring by region
After we've planned our content calendar and launch deadline, Google Trends can help us tailor our content on carnivore diet geographically.
Interest by Region shows us which regions have the highest percentage of searches for “carnivore diet” relative to all searches in that region (learn more).
In the case of the carnivore diet, Australia, New Zealand, and the US are the top results.
At a high level, knowing which regions are most interested in our keyword can help us understand our market more deeply, shifting from a subjective and siloed perspective to a more global one.
More tangibly, a simple and effective way to apply this knowledge would be to address readers from those regions, making a comment like, “And for all the Aussies/kiwis out there…” This is low-risk and has the potential to create an emotional connection with readers where there might otherwise not have been one.
A more time-intensive option would be to research the differences between consuming a carnivorous diet in Australia or New Zealand as opposed to the U.S. and to create content specifically for viewers in that region.
This would likely be worthwhile only if there is a large enough audience in that region, which Glimpse can provide clarity on with absolute search volume by region:
In this case, it looks like Australia might be worthwhile with 16k searches per month, but perhaps not New Zealand.
Another use case for the Interest by Region section is to determine which languages we might consider translating our content into.
While not as applicable for the carnivore diet, there are many topics that have an international, non-English audience. By translating our content into the languages of top regions by volume, we can capture readers where our competitors might not.
Try it yourself: Investigate which regions are most interested in your keyword to uncover additional ways to tailor your content and connect with your audience.
Step 4: Benchmarking internal performance
Finally, after we’ve consistently created content on the carnivore diet for a period of time, we can measure our results.
Let’s imagine two years have passed and we want to understand how well our site grew in the past year compared to the growth in carnivore diet more broadly.
To do this, we can compare the Google Trends data with our internal analytics and calculate whether we’re under or over-performing the overall market’s growth (for argument’s sake, imagine we launched in 2022).
Eyeballing the graph, we see that search interest in Q3, 2024 was roughly double (~80) what it was in 2023 (~40), meaning it had ~100% growth.
If we want a more specific answer, we can download the raw CSV data and compare the average interest from October 1, 2023 to September 30, 2024 against the previous period. Doing this returns 64.77 and 33.72 respectively, or approximately 92% growth YoY.
Glimpse automatically calculates this growth rate for every query, in addition to the absolute monthly search volume:
Now, we can compare our internal data against this growth calculation to gauge our performance.
For instance, if traffic for our carnivore diet-related content is flat, or up only 50% YoY, then we know we’re underperforming. On the other hand, if traffic is up 200%, then we know we’re outperforming the market and capturing demand more effectively than other sources.
Try it yourself: Compare the growth in Google search interest for your core keywords against your internal analytics to benchmark your performance.