Google exposes hot search trends

Labs site points to spikes in interest

Google has introduced an addition to its Trends site with a “Today’s Hot Trends” section that charts spikes in search requests.

The section is intended to be an indicator as to what searches are in vogue and supplements the core ability to analyse what is being searched for on the web. However, the new capability is currently limited to US sites and a search for “Cutty Sark” today was not retuned among the top 100 hottest searches, for example.

The site may also have issues with accuracy or useful metrics on some search terms. A search for the trend history of “Bob Dylan” finds Icelandic as the most significant searching language.

Google Trends, which is still defined by Google as a “Labs” site, has also been upgraded with a global town-by-town view of trends histories and with day-by-day views of previous trends. Users can also drill down for more detail of how “hot” trend searches were, and why.

Google explains its Trends site here.