10 ways to use Google Trends that most people don’t know

Google Trends is a tool for e-commerce and dropshipping sellers to check seasonal trends for certain products or niches. Sellers can even monitor the rankings of competitors through Google Trends.

In this article, we will share tips on using Google Trends, focusing on how to use Google Trends to grow your business.

Google Trends is a great tool for finding popular niche products. Whenever you’re looking for a new niche, make sure to change your search time range from “Past 12 months” to “2004-present.” This will help you get a clear picture of how search volume is increasing or decreasing. And with Google Trends, you can also see the quarterly trends of products at a glance.

Here’s a Google Trends chart for the viral product, posture corrector:

It can be clearly seen that the growth rate of this product has soared in the past few months. We can see that the popularity of this product suddenly increased significantly in January 2018, and then began to decline slightly in February. However, this does not mean that sellers cannot estimate sales. It is necessary to observe this trend product for a while.

Here is a Google Trends chart for a stable niche product, men’s fashion:

As you can clearly see in this chart, the search volume for menswear has dropped from time to time, but for the most part, this niche is very stable. The search volume has fluctuated in previous years, which is normal. Overall, the Google Trends chart for this product shows that this niche is stable. The fluctuations above indicate the seasonal trend of this product. Starting from October to December, the search volume increases, while it starts to decrease in January. This does not mean that you cannot open a menswear store in January, it just means that there is less website traffic at this time of the year.

What does a popular niche product look like on Google Trends? Take fidget spinners:

Prior to February 2017, there was almost no search volume for “fidget spinners.” In May, however, searches for the product peaked. Clearly, interest in fidget spinners had skyrocketed in the previous few months. However, the sharp drop in searches after the peak suggests that it would not be a wise move to consider selling the product at this time.

Let’s say you’ve opened a niche store that specializes in false eyelashes. Once you have your niche, you might be interested in expanding into other verticals. So, you want to sell other product categories in your store that people might be interested in, rather than just false eyelashes.

After typing “fake eyelashes” into Google Trends, scroll down to the bottom and you’ll find “Related topics”:

From the related topics image, we find it interesting that the 4th "Nail" and the 5th "Eye shadow" seem to have nothing to do with false eyelashes, but you can also add them to your store. Because the picture shows that people who search for false eyelashes may also be interested in nail products or eye shadow. As for "adhesive", you can also sell this product in your store because most false eyelashes require glue. Therefore, if you are looking to expand the product line in your store, it may be helpful to check out the related topics.

Note that when you scroll down to view some related topics, you may find some keywords that don’t make sense for your business. For example, Kim Kardashian is listed as the 12th related topic on Google Trends related to false eyelashes. But there is no direct connection between the two.

Let's say you are a seller of women's shirts. Google Trends shows that the search trend for the product keyword is at the top, which is a good sign. Next, you want to know what keywords your audience will use to search, how you can create product categories, and how to optimize soft articles on the topic of women's shirts. There is a little trick: quickly check the Related queries, which are on the right side of the Related topics.

In the full 25 search results, you can see that most of the relevant search results for this product have color tagged. In the first page of related search results above, you can see that there are two search results that include black. In the other pages, you will find white, blue, pink, and green. With these reference examples, you can choose to create product categories by color, such as "black blouses". You can also include these keywords in the product page and product name. "Women shirts" or "blouses for women" can also be listed as categories because these keywords also have a certain amount of search volume and are also related to the category.

The success of your business also depends on seasonal trends. The off-season and peak season of each year will affect your monthly sales. During the peak season, competition and sales will increase. During the off-season, you should start selling seasonal products. Let's use the summer product: padded bikinis as an example:

As the data shows, padded bikinis are not only suitable for summer, but also for winter. The first peak season of each year starts in January and continues to climb until June. Then it drops sharply in November. Let's say it's November now and you decide to open a swimwear store. Seeing this trend, you may feel very frustrated. But in fact, November is a good time to start a business. You have a few months to build your business so that when January comes, you are ready for the peak season.

So, what can a store sell during the off-season? Consider new products that complement the store’s products and are related products that can be sold during the off-season. Since swimwear is usually sold by lingerie brands, it may be possible to sell pajamas during the winter. Let’s take a look at the Google Trends chart for pajamas:

Pajamas are at their peak during the September to December period, so consider selling them during the bikini off-season.

Content marketing allows e-commerce retailers to get more traffic, increase brand awareness, and thus get more customers. Therefore, writing promotional articles for your online store can help you grow your business. One way to drive a surge in search traffic is to "keep your content fresh." What is that? It means you re-edit your soft copy, delete outdated content, add new details, and re-publish your blog.

How can Google Trends help sellers keep their content fresh? Let’s look at seasonal trends from another angle. Suppose you are a seller selling bicycles, you might write an article about “how to fix a bike” to promote bicycles. Put “how to fix a bike” in Google Trends, and you will see the following picture:

The chart shows that the search popularity of this product tends to occur in June/July each year. If you find that your blog post is out of date in Google, you can of course always add fresh content to the article. But if you want to enhance your competitive advantage, you should revise your content during the peak season of the search term. In other words, if you are a bicycle shop owner, you should update your blog post at the end of May. Doing so will soar to the top of the search results for your keywords. Execute this strategy on your best performing SEO articles, and your website traffic will rise immediately.

On the Google Trends homepage, you will see a section called trending searches. Trending searches are the hottest topics at the moment. You can view the global daily trending searches, real-time search trends, and trending searches in each country.

While most of the trending searches are about celebrity news, you can sometimes see trending searches related to a niche. For example, on February 27, 2019, the trending search term of the day was "Momo Challenge" (Momo suicide challenge scam. According to reports, children and teenagers were instigated by a user named Momo to carry out violent attacks, self-harm and even suicide.), with more than 5 million searches. You can check for keywords such as "kids" and "parents" in "Related news". If your target audience is young parents with children, you can write news reports about the topic on your blog.

For example, the second most searched term in the UK that day was Tesla. If you are a seller of auto parts and your target audience is the British, you can report relevant news about top automakers. Why do you do this? Because people who are interested in auto news are likely to buy auto parts. If relevant audiences click through to your online store, you will increase the effectiveness of your retargeting ads.

By occasionally posting newsworthy stories on your store blog, you can drive a lot of traffic to your store. You can also share your news stories on Twitter with a trending hashtag to attract more followers and more likes, comments, and shares.

What’s most interesting is that Google Trends lets you find niche topics by region. When advertising, sellers often target audiences based on region. The United States alone has a population of 325 million. Naturally, the audience in New York State is different from the audience in Louisiana. Let’s take a look at the different views of gold earrings in the two states. Here is a Google Trends graph of Louisiana audiences searching for gold earrings:

As can be seen from the figure, the audience in Louisiana is not very interested in gold earrings. In November 2004, people's search volume for gold earrings increased significantly, reaching 100%, but it has never been that high since then.

Now, let’s take a look at the Google Trends graph for New York State:

As of the set time point, searches for gold earrings have been rising. This means that if you are a seller selling gold earrings, you would be better off targeting individual states like New York to advertise your products. Since the audience there is increasingly interested in gold earrings, whether you promote your products on Facebook or through Google Adwords, you will have the potential to convert into sales. You can refer to the Google Trends chart for all states to determine which states are trending for gold earrings. This way, you can target your audience, increase your sales opportunities, and avoid wasting costs.

With the comparison feature on Google Trends, you can even monitor your competitors to see how their brands are performing. With the Captain Marvel movie coming out, let’s take a look at the Marvel vs. DC comics comparison chart to see how both brands have performed in recent years:

As you can see, in 2004, the performance of the two brands was comparable, with Marvel slightly better. However, after 2013, we saw Marvel's curve rush to its peak, leaving DC far behind.

You can add up to five search terms or competitors when using this feature. If your brand is gaining more and more target audience, you can use Google Trends to compare it with your competitors to make sure you are always one step ahead. If you find that some competitors are growing faster than you, you know to start analyzing their marketing channels and come up with ways to improve them.

Although Google Trends is often used to improve website performance, sellers can also use it to improve their influence on social media, especially YouTube. After typing "fashion" on YouTube to find related videos, we noticed that the first few videos that popped up used the keyword "fashion trends 2019". Putting it into Google Trends, the following results appeared:

This search term skyrocketed in popularity in January of this year. Of course, adding 2019 to the keyword would make it a popular search term at the beginning of this year. However, after returning to YouTube to search for "fashion trends 2019", something interesting appeared:

The first few videos were all released in 2019. Isn’t that interesting? Because these vloggers (and bloggers) shot new content at the beginning of the new year, they can get a head start in terms of traffic. But we found that videos released in 2019 ranked quite well in the search results.

So if you’re planning to make a video about fashion trends in 2019, it’s best to publish it in January, according to Google Trends.

Wait, how do we know what the rest of 2019 will be like? Don’t worry, let’s take a look at the data from “fashion trends 2018” to predict this year’s trends.

As shown in the figure, Youtube users began to search for the keyword "fashion trends 2018" at the end of 2017. We also see that the popularity of this keyword peaked in January 2019. But interestingly, it also peaked in March and September 2018, just before the summer and winter seasons.

How can you take advantage of traffic during these times? If you have a customer email list, you can send emails to your customers in March and September to refresh the popularity of your video. Google sees that you are promoting your video and may move your video to the front, which will increase the number of views on your video. You can also use this strategy if you find that your popular video views are decreasing.

You can also use Google Trends to determine the best time to run Google Shopping ads. Let’s say you’re a fashion brand retailer and you want to promote your new white dress. By looking at the Google Shopping feature of Google Trends, you can get an idea of ​​the best months to run your ads. Take a look at the data below:

There was a high search volume for white dresses in Google Shopping between February and June. Although it dropped in August, it picked up again in September and October. Therefore, if you are a retailer, you should start selling and promoting white dresses between February and June and September and October. The premise is that your target audience must be in the United States. If your target audience is not in the United States, you need to look at the data for the corresponding country.

Google Trends can provide in-depth analysis of the situation and help sellers succeed in their business. Learn the 10 ways to use Google Trends in this article and you will be one step ahead in marketing. Go and try it!