Google has unveiled a new feature of their “Google Trends” software that will allow webmasters to cash in on search trends on a seemingly immediate basis.

Basically, Google has an algorhythym that removes factors such as the “always on top” keywords like “Myspace” and “Pamela Anderson” as well as editorializes risque adult topics to confine the results to one group of keywords: those seeing a strong enough surge in searches to be identified as a “trend”.  Google also has a running list of the 100 Hottest Trends as identified by their software.  So how does this help web developers?  Well if you can’t figure it out, you’ve got some serious issues.

Here are a few ways you can begin applying the Google Trends and Hot Trends information to your web endeavors:

1. Use the Hot Trends to register new domain names based on popularity speculation.  Either plan on reselling or develop into a niche website.
2. Scour the list daily, and if any keywords fall under the umbrella of a forum/blog/site that you have, immediately make a post and ping in hopes of capturing searches for the quickly growing keyword.
3. Research the types of things people search for and HOW they search for them to better understand how to create and develop your PPC keyword lists.
4. Use these “Hot Lists” to immediately start PPC campaigns using them, and driving them to related Affiliate offers.  You’ll likely get “in” before your competition and enjoy a relatively cheap cost per click until the others figure it out.
5. When deciding what your back link anchor text should be, when link building, perhaps it would be a good idea to not only consider the “historical data” but also take into account the trend moving forward… so you’re on top of the link pile before others focus on a similar keyword.

Everyone is making a HUGE deal of this – probably mostly because it is Google.  In reality, this feature has existed for awhile.  Lycos has been running a list of it’s 50 hottest keywords each week that also includes a “biggest increases” and “biggest decreases” to show trends.  You can find the list at http://50.lycos.com.  But after sifting through google’s list I’m eager to see how powerful the tool is… it’s results seem to be a little bit more “different” and not quite as “obvious”.

For example, I would have expected both Lycos and Google to report the “David Hasselhoff Video” and “Jerry Falwell Funeral/Death” as top trends.  But, “NNN Realty Advisors”, a New York Stoch Exchange Comapny, was number 92 on the list at the time of this writing… why?  Trying to uncover the answers to that may lead us to some big opportunities.  The searches for these terms are likely coming in response to news on Wall Street or elsewhere… possibly an hourly trend that Lycos would never have the opportunity to dissect.

Another great feature of Google Trends is the ability to analyze the geographical data they supply.  For example, suppose you have a website that is based around the topic “weight loss”.  Let’s take a look at any trends for this term:

The first thing we might notice is that, broken down by year there is a very obvious consistency.  The keyword skyrockets at the beginning of the year… HELLO New Year’s Resolutions.  It then gradually sags until the end of the year and the cycle starts again.  It appears that 2007 has not been as strong as 2006 for the term.

We then see several news events which may provide more insight… two of the most recent are “5 techie weight loss tools” and “implantable pacemaker”.  Off the top of my head I’m thinking the techie weight loss tools could be great link bait and affiliate opportunities and the implantable pacemaker sounds like a great news story to post to our weight loss blog.

It looks like “Baltimore, MD” is the top city for “weight loss” searches but the United States ranks only fifth as a country.  Actually, all 10 Top Cities are in the United States.  Perhaps we should geographically target these “fat areas” in our adwords campaign.   I can also see this being a TREMENDOUS opportunity to identify keywords and such for other languages and focusing campaigns on the Spanish language or others.

Below I have posted the Top 100 Trends as currently found on the Google Trends site:

Feel free to share your thoughts and ideas on taking advantage of this tool.