Jeff Woelker : Chicago SEO, SEM, and Social Media Consultant

I’m sure by now most marketers know about Google Trends. Trends can provide some great insights about search traffic over time. It’s now updated daily, but what happens if you want to know the search landscape hour by hour. For that Google now has Hot Trends. By acting early, you can grab traffic at it’s peak and while there’s still fewer competitors in the market. Hot Trends is still in beta, much the same as Google Trends, so I suggest you use this data with an ounce of caution, but that it’s definitely worth testing for yourself.

From the Hot Trends site:

Google Trends provides insights into broad search patterns. Please keep in mind that several approximations are used when computing these results.

So how would I use this data?
Well, let’s say you’re a local electronics store in Chicago. You notice that “circuit city closing” is a hot term today. You create a geo-targetted paid search campaign around that term announcing “Joe’s Electronics. Open for 30 years” or whatever it may be. Now let’s say you’re a news station with nationwide coverage. You notice that “colin powell” is a hot term today. You setup a paid search campaign on that term that says “Colin Powell endorses Barack Obama. See the video here.” These are B2C examples, but this can easily be extended to B2B depending on the keywords.

How do I do this?
Well, it does require you to be pretty agile. If you’re working at an agency, hopefully your client allows the freedom to act on these quick trends. If you are not working with an agency, the same holds true for the speed necessary to act.

Image courtesy of daigooliva