Google Trends:

In addition to keyword research, you may also find it useful to examine search trends. Google Trends is a useful free tool that graphs the rise and fall in popularity of 1-4 keywords from 2004 until now.

You can drill down and view trends within a specific country. You can also contrast organic search results with those from Google News.

It's a useful way of detecting seasonal variations in search requests. For example, there is a sharp drop in searches for 'seo' every summer, and a lesser drop over Christmas.

Google trends can also display the general trend for a particular keyword. For example, the following graph shows how searches for the term 'graphic designer' have fallen over the last 4 years, while there is increasing interest in 'seo'...

Google Trends has other uses beyond SEO. The above graph is a case in point. The increasing number of searches for SEO suggest it's a growing market.

This data can be used to support market research, or to get a quick feel for the search trends of a particular target market.

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