Google Trends in Universal Search

Ryan    Uncategorized     Google Trends, Pop-Term SEO, Universal Search

Today, news outlets have been reporting on a tragic event that occurred at Rutgers University just a few days ago. If you haven’t heard the latest news, check it out here. Basically, a college student was caught having sex with another man.. while his roommate proceeded to film him and distribute across the internet via Skype and Twitter.

As the story progressed, news started spreading on the two people who were actually accused of creating the whole mess in the first place: Dharun Ravi and Molley Wei. Wanting to get the full scoop myself, I proceeded to Google search Dharun’s name, and guess what I stumbled upon?

A Google Trends result right on page numero uno! Talk about Universal Search!

With the added Hotness descriptor of ‘Spicy’, and an actual trend rank (in our case, 24), does knowing search trends in your Google results page make your search experience all the more better? While you might think a comparison to Twitter Trends might be in order, the thing I’m most interested in is that trend line and the association with time.

Twitter has a trending topics section and although you might think it is full of junk, it can sometimes point you in the direction of breaking headlines, tweet trends, or just a sponsored result. (What’s new?) Because Google’s Trend addition in search does not necessarily consist of top trends like Twitter, but only the specific trend (or two) associated with your search term, the benefit of the actual information is much more different than finding headlines. Google Trends assumes you already know the headlines!

Going back to that trend timeline, with the added advantage of seeing the popularity of your search term across time, you should now be able to understand the affect of noteworthy news and headlines as they play into people’s search habits! Why the exclamation point you ask? If search engine optimization and marketing gurus understand the behavioral relationship of search and time (even more than they do now), the importance of real-time search will undoubtedly grow exponentially. There was a time where we relied on Twitter, News, or Blogs to reach real-time searchers, but if our speed to publishing continues to increase, I’m sure there will be a vast amount of additional material you or I could possibly stumble upon. If you can pump out a 12 page eBook on how the new Facebook movie relates to something going on in Dharun Ravi’s life in a day or two… I bet you could get a big chunk of readership just from the trend in popularity the two topics yield. I’m not saying this is a great idea, but those who are really into content as a means to drive traffic… what other crap can you think of writing about on a day like today? Why do you think bloggers often use pop-culture to attract viewership? Why do you think I’m writing about this certain topic?

Maybe a new aspect of Search Engine Optimization for today’s marketing experts should be the value of pop-term usage and the power that mass search can yield. Has anyone coined the term “Pop-Term SEO” yet?

If you enjoyed this article please consider sharing it!