8 Ways to Do Trend Analysis on the Internet

Years ago doing a market or trend analysis was a tedious task that could take a long time, today we have many tools for which the marketers of a decade ago would have killed or paid fortunes ... we today have them for free.

Many of them are known to us and we use them every day and if you still do not use them to analyze trends and markets, you simply need to use another approach when using them.

So now we are going to see X ways to do trend analysis on the Internet:

1) Google Search: Our old friend Google is by itself one of the best tools to analyze trends, we use it every day and it is most likely the first thing that opens in your browser ... that well-known (and sometimes mysterious) friend is you best ally.

When searching for «Luna Park», we can see at the end the related searches, What is related to Luna Park today?

And this without counting all the organic results that we have above these suggestions, Google per se It could already be used for some other research work that we have to do.

Yes, I know, It is a bit ashamed that many times we do not have to use dark secrets from the depths of the Internet to achieve our goals ... but if it works, it works!

2) Search Wheel: I have already written a couple of articles about this tool but I emphasize its importance to perform almost all types of analysis, first we click here:

Y Open Sesame! We choose the Search wheel option from the results that appear.

As we see among the things most related to "Argentine recitals" there is an upcoming concert, a synonym of search that is also widely used and it is also quite popular to search for upcoming concerts.

This may seem very obvious if we have a certain general knowledge, but when it comes to doing trend studies for markets that you have no idea about, it can be very useful, especially when deepening the search queries that we find most interesting.

3) Related searches: Directly above the Search Wheel we find the option of related searches, an option just as useful to expand our ideas.

4) Google Trends: As its name implies, this tool is used to compare the trends of two keywords, which search term is more popular?

If we enlarge the image we see that clearly in Argentina the word "recitals" is used more than "concerts", in Paraguay (where I am from) however the situation is reversed ... If we are going to campaign for another country, we must ALWAYS check the synonyms and know which one is the most used in that area.

5) Google Insights: Once again, the name of the tool tells us what it is about, it allows us to obtain a "vision" of the traffic flow handled by a keyword over time, a VERY flexible tool to be able to adapt it to our needs.

By enlarging the image we see that we have geographic and temporal options, in this case the keyword "Recitales Argentina" is experiencing explosive growth and even Google makes a small estimate in the future that growth will continue.

6) Local Trending Topics: Now we go a bit into Social Media, the local trends that Twitter shows us are a VERY valuable tool to know what interests people and what they are talking about in real time.

Although this option is not yet available for Argentina (update May 2011: is already available in Argentina several months ago)

Here we see how in Mexico the topics that people talk about the most are the iPad, Cabañas and the massacre in Juarez ... all bad news as usual: S

7) Facebook Lexicon: In this case I leave a link to an article by my friend @chicaseo where he explains it in detail 🙂

You can read the article at the following link: Facebook Lexicon.

8 ) Amazon Gift Central: For today I leave you this last resort, if we are dedicated to importing products this can be VERY USEFUL to know with a couple of clicks which products are popular in other countries.

The gift tips are cataloged by categories such as: him, her, teens, girlfriend, student, etc.

All these trend analysis tools that I just recommended are free and we surely use them every day… what I want to highlight with this article is that depending on the approach given to each tool they can have many different uses.

What uses do you give it? 😉