Skip to main content
Go to dashboard
Not sure where to start? Take a short quiz to get personalised recommendations.
Lesson 1 of 16
Google Trends: See what’s trending across Google Search, Google News and YouTube.
Data Journalism
Permissions: Source Google Data.
Dataset Search Quickstart Guide
Public Data Explorer: Access a world of data.
Google Trends: Understanding the data.
Google Data GIF Maker
Google Sheets: Visualizing data
Visualizing Data: Flourish templates.
Data Source: Global Forest Watch.
Google Sheets: Scraping data from the internet
Google Sheets: Cleaning data
Data Studio: Make interactive data visualizations
Visualizing Data: Introduction to Tilegrams.
Visualizing Data: Advanced Tilegrams.
Google Trends: Improving your search results.
check_box_outline_blank Data Journalism: Take the Quiz
Course
0% completed
5 minutes to complete

Google Trends: See what’s trending across Google Search, Google News and YouTube.

US Elections in Search 2020

Find stories and terms people are paying attention to.

US Elections in Search 2020

How Trends works.

Explore what United States is searching for right now

Google Trends allows you to see the topics people are—or aren’t—following, practically in real time. Journalists can use this information to explore potential story ideas, and can also feature Trends data within news stories to illustrate a general level of interest in, say, a political candidate, social issue or event.

The Google Trends homepage (google.com/trends) features clustered topics that Google detects are related and trending together on either Search, Google News, or YouTube. Trending Stories are collected based on Google’s Knowledge Graph technology, which gathers search information from those three Google platforms to detect when stories are trending based on the relative spike in volume and the absolute volume of searches.

The Featured insights at the top of the new Google Trends homepage are curated by News Lab to highlight additional data patterns or interesting trends.


Explore what United States is searching for right now

On the homepage.

International Women's Day 2023

The Trends homepage indicates what topics are trending right now, which can be helpful when choosing a story to write about. To explore how Google data can be used to tell stories, click one of the examples under Latest Stories and Insights. 

International Women's Day 2023

Exploring your own topics.

In addition to what you see on the homepage, you can explore and gauge interest in virtually any topic, which can be useful for developing story ideas.


Let’s say you’re doing a story on the U.S. presidential election, and want to compare the election process with that of India’s General elections happening in the same year. Just use the Trends search bar:


Enter the India General Election in the Google Trends search bar at the top of the homepage. Press Return to see your results.


Your results page will feature data visualizations for Interest over time and Interest by subregion, as well as lists of Related topics and Related queries.


You can add topics for simultaneous comparison by clicking + Compare and typing in your search term.


To remove or edit a topic, hover over its box and click the three dots that appear. Then click Remove.


You can also search for multiple terms simultaneously just by writing them into the Add a search term box.

Comparing groups of terms.

Explore Ohio and Floria Election Turnout

You can compare up to five groups of terms at one time and up to 25 terms in each group. Group terms together by using + Add.

Explore Ohio and Floria Election Turnout

Explore by language.

Election Comparison

If you enter a search term using non-Latin characters, you’ll see data from all countries or regions that use those characters. For example, if you enter 選挙, the Japanese characters for election, your results will not include much data from the United States.

You can easily compare searches of the same term in different languages. Using the election example, just enter search term 選挙  in the first search box, then enter election in the + Compare search box.

Election Comparison

Narrowing or expanding your search by geography and time.

United States Presidential Election Dates

On the results page under the search bar, use the dropdowns Worldwide and 2004-present to refine your exploration further by region and/or time period.

United States Presidential Election Dates

More about Trends.

Google Trends Explore Menu

Information on how to better understand Google Trends data and read its charts can be found in our Google Trends: Interpreting the Data tutorial, and also in the Trends Help centre accessible from the menu in the upper left of the homepage.

Google Trends Explore Menu
How would you rate this lesson?
Your feedback will help us to continuously improve our lessons!
ANSWER THIS QUESTION TO COMPLETE THE LESSON.
What factors does Google use to determine which topics are “trending?”
Next
1-2.jpg
QUESTION 2 OF 5
When you click on a topic in “Stories trending now,” which type of information is NOT available?
Next
2_a6cDW4T.jpg
QUESTION 3 OF 5
When you perform a query in Google Trends, what types of information will surface in your immediate results?
Next
3_S0X5wC7.jpg
QUESTION 4 OF 5
When you enter a query as a “search term” versus a “topic” which of the following is true?
Next
4_kwQJETo.jpg
QUESTION 5 OF 5
What are the maximum number of terms you can compare at one time?
Submit
5.jpg
Quiz complete
Congratulations! You've just finished Google Trends: See what’s trending across Google Search, Google News and YouTube.
Review the lesson and try again
in progress
Recommended for you
  • What is Machine Learning

    Lesson
    Machine Learning for journalists.
    Remove from your account
    Save to your account
  • How to make them using makestories.io

    Lesson
    makestories.io is a platform specially created to help people make, publish, and monetize Google Web Stories. It’s free, and it can be used with any content management system. Here are the basics of how to get started with makestories.io.
    Remove from your account
    Save to your account
  • How to make them using WordPress

    Lesson
    WordPress is the standard for so many content makers, and now the ability to create Web Stories is built right into the platform.
    Remove from your account
    Save to your account
Save results and track your progress
By leaving this page you will lose all progress on your current lesson. Are you sure you want to continue and lose your progress?