Google Trends - Stay On Top Of The World

If you have never heard of Google Trends you don't know what you are missing! Google Trends is a tool that you can use to see what people in the world are searching for in real time. I can't tell you how many stories I have discovered through Google Trends way before they ever hit CNN, or any other source just by using their handy IGoogle gadget on my IGoogle homepage. It not just news stories either, it could be any quirky thing that people are searching for. You never know what you are going to run into that is for sure. You can add it to your IGoogle page just by clicking this link.

For those of you who publish blogs like me, this can be an invaluable tool to stay ahead of the public and give them what they want before they even know it. Since Google Trends link directly to sources that are related to that individual Google Trend, you can also generate traffic. Just make sure your page is relevant to the Google Trend and bam your site will show up and you will start to see traffic coming from yet another Google source. You can try out Google Trends right here, just don't forget who sent you there : )Now sure that sounds pretty cool right, but that is just the beginning of the many uses of Google Trends. My favorite use is to compare keywords to see which one gets more search volume. This is an amazingly useful tool when it comes to choosing keywords for Google Adwords or when you are choosing a URL or just a title for your blog post. For example you could compare Coke and Pepsi or Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. You can do more than two keywords at once to like Microsoft, Google, Yahoo. The results are displayed in graph form like the one above, over a period of several years. They even break it down by region, cities and languages. As you can imagine the possible uses for Google Trends is, like the Internet, endless.

What are your thoughts on Google Trends? Do you have any tips or tricks that you use to have your website show up in Google Trends? If so please leave them in the comments below...

Advertise On Television With Google Adwords

Google yesterday unveiled that they would be opening up Google TV Ads to most Adwords customers. This potential breakthrough in advertising should level the playing field against some of the more entrenched advertising players. In the end though, it will only benefit the consumer. More competition = lower prices for the purchaser, and isn't that what everyone wants?

I can only imagine we are just a step away from more real local ads on cable and satellite, instead of the barrage of car and drug company commercials that really don't do much good. After all, I already have a car and feel in tip top shape. Google has created the ability to target ads locally so well, that any small business should be able to advertise only in a small target location, therefore costing less, and not waisting ad dollars.

Google has already given their Adwords users the ability to advertise on the radio, but television is a giant leap. Plus, we are now more than every seeing the transition to computers and television working together for example TIVO and Youtube new partnership. The convergence is well overdue...

Check out this video that shows you how to setup your account and let us know what you think about Google's new push into advertising on television?