Google Trends gets a big update including with New Monthly Top Charts & Trending Topics Displayed and Trends Visualizations
One of our favorite little Web tools, Google Trends, gets a big makeover. Google Trends has started a new monthly “spirit of the times” Top Charts feature with more than 40 categories of Top 10 lists that include people, places and things ranked by search interest. According to today’s post from Google’s Official Blog, the Top Charts go back to 2004 and will continue to be updated monthly. You can find the Top Charts link from the Google Trends homepage on the left-hand side of the site.
While Google states that the Top Charts include their most accurate search volume rankings, they note that no algorithm is perfect and anomalies in the data may be found on rare occasions.
Also added to Google Trends is a colorful visualization of trending topics happening in real-time. By clicking on the “Visualize Hot Searches in full-screen” link from the Google Trends homepage, users can view Hot Searches one-by-one in bold colors, or use a small box icon in the top left corner of the screen to view up to 25 top real-time searches. The Hot Search topics can also be filtered by supported regions.
Other updates to Google Trends include a more robust homepage with more upfront information, and a search box that remains available at all times from the top of the site.
Google is pretty spot-on when it comes to search – it is made even better and more accurate by Knowledge Graph, a data analyzer that understands through the ambiguity of language and offers precise definitions of a single term.
Aside from Top Charts, Google has also developed a pretty awesome graphic representation of Internet’s most popular trends as they get hotter, showcased in bright colors.
You can use the grid options located at the top-left corner of the screen to customize the way you view the graphic. You can also filter results by choosing one of 11 available countries under the Region dropdown menu. Currently, there doesn’t seem to be an embed option available for the vibrantly highlighted representation, but users can select specific topics under Hot Trends, where a customizable embed widget is offered.
