How to Use Google Trends for YouTube
Require guidance on your keyword and content strategies for YouTube? Read five steps you can use Google Trends to uncover valuable insights.
Google Trends can give a wealth of insights that can help guide keyword and content strategies. This article will learn some ideas to use Google Trends to gain insights for YouTube and your video content strategy.
What Does Google Trends Data Represent?
There is a right amount of confusion over what data is represented within Google Trends.
Google Trends does not represent exact search volume for a particular query, but rather the relative popularity of a search term.
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Here’s the explanation of the Google Trends Help Center:
“Trends adjusts search data to make associations between terms easier. Each data point is divided on the total searches of the geography and time range it represents, to compare comparable popularity.”
In different words, related popularity is the ratio of a query’s search volume to the sum of the search volumes of all potential questions.
“The resulting numbers then make scaled on a range of 0 to 100 based on a topic’s proportion to all searches.”
Understanding Google Trends Data and the YouTube Algorithm
To happily use Google Trends to generate video content plans, it’s necessary to understand:
- How Google Trends displays data.
- The YouTube algorithm.
Google Trends
As discussed above, a common misconception by Google Trends is that this tool reports on the search volume of many keyword terms and topics.
Google Trends comes on normalized search data to make comparisons among terms more simple.
According to Google, this data is normalized in the following way:
- Every data point is divided by the geography and time range searches to compare relative popularity.
- The numbers that result are scaled on a range of 0 to 100 based on a topic’s proportion, about relation almost, to all searches on all types of various issues.
- Different regions that show the same amount of search interest for a specific term don’t ever have the same total search volumes.
So basically, Google Trends reveals interest in a particular topic from around the world.
YouTube Algorithm
Need to use Google Trends to help optimize content for YouTube?
Then it is vital to know some of the internal workings of Google’s algorithm.
YouTube’s algorithm converges heavily on individual video performance. This includes:
- Click-through rates.
- Average watch time
- Many likes, dislikes, comments, and shares.
- How popular a video does (velocity a.k.a., rate of growth).
- How new a video is (latest videos often get preference).
- Frequency of often a channel uploads latest videos.
- User session on the YouTube platform.
How to Use Google Trends to Your Video Content Strategy
1. Use Google Trends Categories
You can utilize Google Trends’ category feature to help view topics that fall in line with your channel covers.
If your channel doesn’t directly fall in-line with any of these categories, you can see related topics that may still pertain.
For example, staring at the “food & drink” category, you can see some overlapping topics. Unsurprisingly, currently, COVID-19.
This is an excellent way to see high-level topics currently trending in search and identify any overlap that may be relevant for your channel’s video content.
If you need to view more granular details about trending within all of these topics, you can click into all of them to see related articles that can provide more insights on the specifics.
2. Look at Various Search Types
Other handy features of Google Trends are that you can identify trending topics across various forms of search.
You can also view them by standard web search and YouTube search.
Looking at the standard Google search engine helps generate video content ideas. You can still get even more insights by checking out what is currently trending within the YouTube search itself.
You may notice some resemblances and differences that can help you better create video content specifically.
YouTube Search
Web Search
You can view some similarities and differences between web search and YouTube search.
Becoming an even more laser-focused view on what is trending in YouTube search, and not just search in general, helps prioritize your content creation.
3. Analyze Seasonal Trends
Another thing to consider when viewing Google Trends for video content ideas is seasonal patterns.
By knowing these, you can schedule out your content creation and prioritize it.
Seasonality will differ by topic. Some trends, we know, are seasonal and can therefore prioritize around them.
Take, for example, “eggnog recipe”:
Different trends are situational, and we may not have anticipated them, but we can get more insight into these by viewing Google Trends data.
Let’s get a look at the query, “how to cut hair.”
Web Search
YouTube Search
That is particularly helpful as well, as YouTube’s algorithm will prioritize trending and recent videos.
Suppose you can identify a seasonal topic or more of a trending topic due to something situational. In that case, that can significantly help to capitalize on that aspect of YouTube’s algorithm.
This can then take your video in front of more eyeballs.
4. Find Timely Keyword Targets
Google Trends can be essential for keyword research.
As we saw earlier, Google Trends doesn’t report on search volume. It does say on the overall popularity of particular topics.
Moreover, Google Trends can help give you more insight into which general keywords, or topic clusters, to target because of the trended data.
You can easily view which topics are trending upward in popularity and down over time.
Downward: “At home workouts.”
Upward: “Early voting by state.”
You can also view these timely topics at the related topics to help build out optimal content sub-topics.
5. Watch Topical Trends by Region
Google Trends can help to know content topics that vary in popularity on state or region. That can help guide hyper-local content strategies for local optimization goals. You can create valuable content specifically aimed at people in these locations:
You can also drill down further and utilize a location comparison tool to see any comparisons or differences. Staring at this can help you to prioritize content in the region.
If you saw even a minor or substantial difference in the timeliness of a topic by region, you could prioritize the timeline of the content for those areas.
Conclusion
Google Trends can help keyword research, content calendar planning, and the design of other organic tasks and projects (and paid ones) – especially in a year where trending topics and typical seasonality study differently for many businesses.
