Google has some great (free) tools for marketers and analysts to leverage in their decision-making process. Google Trends houses a mass amount of data, open to the public, offering insights into search behavior and topics trending on the Google platform.
They also offer similar insights surrounding Hot Videos on YouTube.
For those true data junkies, there is even the ability to correlate Google trends, based on what you want to analyze.
What has become very interesting over time, is how this available information helps to predict outcomes of global issues, as well as clarify insights after the fact. By monitoring search behavior on Google and watching the trends within a region or surrounding a major event or cause, it becomes apparent what the sentiment is or what people might be concerned about.
A great example of this was the recent Brexit vote in the U.K. Google Trends posted the following on their Twitter account, while the vote was still underway!
+250% spike in "what happens if we leave the EU" in the past hourhttps://t.co/9b1d6Bsx6D
— GoogleTrends (@GoogleTrends) June 24, 2016
Once the official results had been announced, Google Trends listed the top searches (posed as questions) within the U.K.:
This insight into consumer behavior is what should drive marketers to make intelligent and informed decisions about the audience(s) they are advertising too. It can also lead to some interesting deductions and analysis related to human behavior.
Either way, data is (and will always be) golden!
