Google Trends is a free Google tool that shows how interest in a search term or topic changes over time and between places, on a relative scale from 0 to 100. It does not show how many people searched; it shows when a subject is more or less popular compared with its own peak, which makes it most useful for spotting seasons, shifts and rising questions.
How Google Trends works
Trends takes a sample of Google searches and divides searches for your term by all searches in the chosen place and time, so a big country does not automatically outscore a small one. The highest point in your chosen window becomes 100 and everything else is scaled against it. A value of 50 means half as popular as that peak, not 50 searches.
You choose four settings at the top of the page: location, time range, category and search type (web, image, news, Google Shopping or YouTube). Location matters most. Set it to United Kingdom, or narrow it to England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland and then to regions below them, so the pattern reflects UK searchers rather than a worldwide average dominated by other countries.
You can compare up to five terms on one chart, and you can choose between a search term (the exact words) and a topic (a group of related searches in any wording). Below the chart, Related queries lists “Top” searches and “Rising” ones, with “Breakout” marking very sharp recent growth.
Why it matters
UK demand follows UK calendars. Interest in Self Assessment tax help climbs through January towards the 31 January deadline. UK Mother’s Day searches peak ahead of Mothering Sunday in March or early April, not in May as in the United States, so a worldwide chart will mislead a UK gift retailer. Barbecue, garden furniture and air conditioning searches jump in hot spells, while boiler servicing and damp treatment rise as the weather turns. Knowing when interest builds tells you when pages need to be live and indexed, which is usually weeks before the peak.
Trends also helps choose between wordings. Comparing “estate agent” with “letting agent”, or “solicitor” with “lawyer”, for the United Kingdom shows which phrasing people actually use, a useful check alongside proper keyword research.
What it cannot do is size a market. Because it shows relative interest, two terms can both reach 100 while one is searched hundreds of times more often. For search volume you need a tool such as Google’s Keyword Planner.
Common mistakes
- Leaving the location on Worldwide. The chart then reflects global behaviour, not the UK market you sell to.
- Reading the index as volume. A score of 100 is a peak, not a number of searches.
- Comparing across separate charts. Each chart is scaled to its own peak, so numbers from two different searches cannot be compared.
- Using a short window to judge seasonality. Twelve months shows one cycle; five years shows whether the pattern repeats.
- Chasing every rising query. A breakout term may be a one-day news story with no lasting demand.
How to act on it
Set the location to United Kingdom and the time range to the past five years, then enter the main products or services you sell. Note the months where each line rises and falls, and plan content and campaigns to be live before the climb. This is the practical side of seasonality planning.
Use the region breakdown to see where interest is strongest, which can help decide which areas to target with local pages or ads. Check Related queries for questions worth answering on your site. Then take the terms that look promising into a volume tool before committing budget. If you want this done properly across your whole range, it forms part of the keyword research I carry out.