Free Tools for Monitoring Hot Search Trends

(Note: Updated June 2011 – see list of trend tools below)

A tactic that some news and content sites employ is monitoring Google’s Hot Trends list in an effort to identify hot topics and then quickly produce matching content around them.

Does this work? Sometimes. Many search trends come and go quickly so sites that cover a topic after its peak will likely miss out on the larger search engine visibility opportunity. As I covered in my post on dealing with seasonal search declines it’s not easy to chase search trends because there is a danger of always ending up one step behind.

But occasionally a search trend has greater sustainability or fits well into a particular site’s area of coverage, in which case jumping in and producing related content can really pay off.

So how do you monitor these trends? The major engines all produce some form of hot topic/trend list and several third-party and social media sites do as well. You can also use keyword and reputation monitoring tools, real-time search tools and popular/meme lists for articles, tweets, social media submissions, etc.

Here are some free resources for identifying hot topics and search trends. I’ve primarily stuck to aggregated trend/topic lists to keep the list manageable.

UPDATE:
Free trend tools frequently come and go especially in the social space, so I’ll try to update this list periodically. My most recent update is June 2011.

If you know of any others please let me know.

Search Engines