Google trends is a monitoring tool and it’s quite handy for seeing what people are talking about, but that’s about it. It’s no rival to the professional monitoring tools out there but it’s free, which makes it great value for money.

Google Trends won’t bring you lots of visitors on it’s own, but judicious use of the insight it offers can help. For example, you might use Google trends to spot short-tail keywords, i.e. if. during the world cup, you Googled for Robert Green ( the England goalkeeper who scored an own-goal ) there were plenty of results but no sponsored ads. With no competition bidding on “Robert Green” as a keyword it was possible to reach an audience of football fans for very little cost, especially when compared to bidding on “world cup”.

Alternatively you might just use it to research an article or to benchmark and monitor public interest before, during and after a campaign… Ultimately it’s a tool, like a spanner. It doesn’t do anything on it’s own but, in the right hands and with some other tools, a person can build amazing things.