Free Tools for Monitoring Hot Search Trends

by Adam Sherk on October 1, 2009

This week Google started embedding a Hot Trends graph at the bottom of search results pages for queries that fall within their top 100 fastest-rising search terms, as seen in this example screenshot:

Hot Trends graph embedded on Google results page

While checking out search trends is interesting for users, it can also be valuable to publishers. 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.

Search Engines

Blog Search

Twitter

Other Social Media

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Related posts:

  1. 5 Ways to Deal with Seasonal Dips in Search Engine Traffic
  2. How to Identify Your Own Top Trends of 2009
  3. My Top 10 Posts of 2009 on News Media, SEO and Social Media
  4. Google Social Search: Are You in Your Target Audiences’ Social Circles?
  5. Do People Search for “Breaking News”?

{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }

Gary Gregory October 9, 2009 at 4:51 pm

Thank you for the list! Very helpful as I only used a couple of these previously. I personally found that Google Trends tends to be a little more sensationalistic than the others.

Marquerite Buley January 25, 2010 at 6:40 pm

I just started using Twitter not too long ago, since then I’ve begun to love it. What started out as a hatred for Twitter it’s allowed me to network with people in my business alot easier. News and updates happen in quickly which makes for a great social communication app.

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