Google Trends Gets MUCH More Useful For PR Pros

Google’s tool for tracking search term popularity, , just got a lot more useful by rather than monthly, .

The upgrade to Google Trends also includes a that shows you the 100 most popular search phrases for a given day and even look deeper at individual search phrases. 

For example, the third most popular search phrase on September 24, 2007, the eve of the video game release, was "." By clicking on that phrase’s link on the Hot Trends page, you can see .

The upgraded Google Trends also includes to add to your iGoogle start page and so you can subscribe to them with your RSS reader.

The most useful new feature is the ability to change dates on the Hot Trends so you can view historic data. This feature will give us the ability to track the life cycle of searches and search types as well as to better understand search behavior, particularly event-driven or media-driven search surges.

I’ve noticed, for example, that people search for football-related information on Sundays and Mondays, the days of the games. The Sundays have a high proportion of NFL players’ names among the most popular searches.

The September 17, 2007 Monday Night Football game pitted the . included "hyperbaric chamber," "andy reid," and "charles barkley."

is the head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles and the Monday Night Football broadcast team discussed his sons’ recent legal problems. The broadcast team also mentioned that one of the football players playing that night used a hyperbaric chamber to help with their game. And finally, former basketball great was "in the booth" of the Monday Night Football team.

Clearly, viewers were turning to the Web for further information that they heard about on the broadcast.

Google Trends is now an invaluable tool to help Internet marketers and public relations professionals gain insight into how offline media and events affect search behavior.