How to use Google Trends for Market Research

As an entrepreneur, you may have an idea, but not sure how to do the research needed to find out whether or not the idea is being searched for by other people. That's where the tool Google Trends comes into play.

When looking at how to use Google Trends for market research, look carefully at the search performance over time, compare multiple searches, and see how other top companies in your field are performing.

Look at search performance

One important step in how to use Google Trends for market research is looking carefully at search performance.

Let's use our own app Swizo as an example. When doing research for this app, one of the keywords that we wanted to see if people were searching was "brainstorming tool."

So, we went to Google Trends, and typed in the word "brainstorming tool."

When you look at the graph, you will see that it rises and falls, but for the most part, in the last 12 months, the interest is high. Our keywords falls on average in the 40-50 mark. This is not bad at all. It shows that there is interest in a brainstorming tool.

If we look at the past 90 days, we will see that the interest over time is in the 30-40 mark on average. This too is not bad.

When looking for how to use Google Trends for market research, keep in mind that your search result does not need to be extremely popular, just something that people are searching for.

A good idea to do is to map out each idea you have with different keywords and their performace, helping you visualize your idea. That's where our project brainstorming tool comes in.

Compare multiple searches

Another point to consider when looking for how to use Google Trends for market research to to compare multiple searches. market.

Going back to our example, after we searched "brainstorming tool", we also searched keywords like "mindmapping", "organize ideas", "ways to research", "business planning tool", and more. Why these keywords?

We want to choose keywords that people are most likely to search for when looking for us. That way, we can show up on Google for these keywords.

The next thing we'll do is to use the "compare" feature on Google Trends to see how these keywords perform against one another.

We can see that "orgainize ideas" is the best performing keyword by far, with interest over time in the last twelve months on average in the 50-60 range. These are great numbers, and shows us that we are on track to creating a service that people need.

View top performers

A final point to consider when looking for how to use Google Trends for market research is to see how top performers in your niche are performing on Google.

In our case, one of the other popular planning tools out there is Notion. You've probably heard of it. When you search for it on Google Trends, you will see that the search queries are very high, averagin in the 50-60 range.

However, this is good. Why?

Something to keep in mind when looking for how to use Google Trends for market research, is that if a business in your niche is doing well, it is because there is a demand for that product or service.

In our case, this tells us that many people are looking for a planning or productivity software. When doing further research, we see that there is not specific brainstorming tool for entrepreneurs, or a tool that allows you to tie mindmaps and concepts to projects.

Once you use Google Trends to do this research on your idea or the problem that you are trying to solve, that's when you come in with your solution, like what we are doing with Swizo.

How Swizo can help you perform market research

Learing how to use Google Trends for market research is not difficult, and when done correctly, can be really helpful.

With our brainstorming tool, you can mind-map different search queries, ideas and concepts you may search for on Google Trends, helping you brainstorm problems and solutions to those problems. This, in turn, will allow you to move forward with that idea for your business, as you have a clearer idea of what your goal is.

Interested in what Swizo has to offer? If so, click the link to learn more.