Last updated: October 2026.
Google Trends shows how search interest in a topic changes over time, by region and by season, using a sample of real Google searches scaled to an index of 0 to 100. For an Australian business it answers a question a keyword tool cannot: is demand for this service growing, shrinking, or about to peak?
Key takeaways
- Google Trends data is a sample of actual Google searches, anonymised, categorised and aggregated, so it shows relative popularity rather than real search volumes (Google Trends Help, 2026).
- Values are normalised to a scale of 0 to 100, which means 100 is the peak for that term in the time range you selected, not 100 searches.
- Rising related searches show growth as a percentage, and “Breakout” means the term grew by more than 5,000 per cent.
- Two newer features are easy to miss: the Google Trends dataset in BigQuery, and the Gemini powered side panel on the Explore page.
- Seasonality is where Australian businesses get the most value, because content published after the peak has already missed the demand.
What is Google Trends?
Google Trends is a free Google tool that shows how often a topic or search term is entered into Google, relative to everything else being searched. It covers a global view down to city level geography, and it reports interest by time, by region and by category.
Trends is the only mainstream free tool that answers the direction of demand rather than its size. A keyword tool will tell you that a phrase gets a set number of searches each month; Trends tells you whether that phrase is climbing, fading or spiking every January.
The Australian interface is available at Google Trends for Australia, which defaults its regional data to Australian states and territories. The tool is free and requires no account.
How does Google Trends data work?
Google Trends normalises its data so different terms and places can be compared fairly. Each data point is divided by the total searches for the geography and time range selected, and the result is scaled to a range of 0 to 100 based on that topic’s proportion of all searches (Google Trends Help, 2026).
That normalisation has one consequence that trips up most people. Two regions can both show an interest score of 100 while having completely different numbers of searches, which is why Trends must never be read as a volume estimate.
| Question | Does Google Trends answer it? |
|---|---|
| Is interest in this service growing or falling? | Yes, it is the tool’s strongest use |
| When does demand peak each year? | Yes, over a five year view with the seasonality setting |
| Which Australian state or city searches most? | Yes, as relative interest on a map |
| How many searches does this term get each month? | No, use a keyword tool for volumes |
| Is this term worth money to my business? | No, Trends has no intent or revenue data |
| What will people search next week? | No, Trends describes the past, it does not predict |
The most common misuse is quoting a Trends index as if it were a search volume. A score of 100 means that point was the highest in the selected window, which could be the highest of six searches or six million.
How do you use Google Trends for keyword research?
Use Google Trends for keyword research to confirm that demand exists, to see which of two phrases people actually use, and to find the rising terms worth writing about first. It is a filter that sits before and after volume research, not a replacement for it.
Compare two or more terms in one view
Up to five terms can be compared at once, which settles arguments about wording quickly. Put a term your audience says beside a term you would say, and the line that stays higher is the one to build the page around. Google also shows the difference as a percentage in the quick comparison view.
Read the top and rising related searches
Every term you enter comes with a list of searches made alongside it, split into top and rising. Top searches are the terms most frequently searched with yours in the same session, while rising searches are the ones with the most significant growth in the period selected, shown as a percentage change (Google Trends Help, 2026).
| List | What it means | What to do with it |
|---|---|---|
| Top | Searched alongside your term most often | Use these as subheadings and internal link anchors |
| Rising | Fastest growing searches with your term, shown as a percentage | Write these pages first, before competitors notice |
| Breakout | Growth of more than 5,000 per cent in the period | Treat with care, it usually means a news spike or a fad |
A Breakout label is exciting and frequently misleading. A term can break out because of a viral moment and collapse within a fortnight, so check whether the rise is a trend or a spike before committing a page to it. The process DigiFix uses to weigh a keyword against real buyer intent is set out in the guide to choosing keywords.
How do you spot seasonal demand before it arrives?
Spotting seasonality early is the single highest value use of Google Trends for an Australian business, because content takes time to rank. A five year view shows the annual rhythm, and the month you see the peak is roughly the month you needed to publish.
The working rule is to publish a seasonal page two to three months before the peak, so it has time to be crawled, indexed and tested. Use the five year view rather than the twelve month default, and treat any single year as noise until three years agree.
| Australian seasonal pattern | Queries to test in Trends | Publish by |
|---|---|---|
| Summer cooling demand | air conditioner repair, ducted cooling | October |
| End of financial year | tax deductible, EOFY sale, tax agent | April |
| Winter heating and energy bills | heating repair, compare electricity | March |
| Tax return lodgement | tax return, accountant near me | May |
| Christmas retail and hospitality | christmas party venue, gift ideas | September |
Confirm each row in Trends for your own state before acting on it. Seasonal timing shifts by city, and a pattern that peaks in December in Melbourne can peak a fortnight earlier in Brisbane.
Want a content calendar built around your peak season?
DigiFix maps demand in Google Trends against your services, then builds the publishing schedule backwards from each peak.
How do you compare regions in Australia?
Comparing regions shows where a service is most likely to be searched, which is useful for deciding where to spend a limited budget. The map shades each area by how likely a search is in that location, with darker shading meaning a higher probability, and a ranked list of regions appears beside the map.
Google notes two limits worth remembering (Google Trends Help, 2026). Metros are only provided for some countries, and an unshaded region does not mean there is no interest at all, it means the term was not popular enough there to appear. Australia is available at state and territory level, which is detailed enough to guide most local campaigns.
Read regional data as a where, not a how much. A state showing the strongest relative interest is a signal to prioritise it for content and ad spend, but the score itself says nothing about the size of that market.
What is the Google Trends dataset in BigQuery?
The Google Trends dataset gives programmatic access to much larger volumes of Trends data through BigQuery, rather than one chart at a time. Google publishes the Top 25 overall and Top 25 Rising queries from the past 30 days as a BigQuery dataset available on Google Cloud Marketplace (Google Trends Help, 2026).
Scope and grain matter when you plan to use it.
- The United States scope covers the top queries across 210 designated market areas
- US data is available daily for a rolling five year window, and hourly across four daily snapshots for a rolling year
- The international scope covers roughly 50 additional countries by ISO country code and sub-region
- Data is normalised and aggregated before publication, so the privacy rules are the same as the free interface
For most Australian small businesses the free interface is enough, because a dataset of top queries by international region does not answer a question about one suburb. The dataset becomes valuable when a business is tracking hundreds of terms across states and wants the analysis in a spreadsheet or a dashboard instead of screenshots.
How does Gemini change the Google Trends Explore page?
Gemini now powers a side panel on the redesigned Explore page that suggests search terms to compare. Selecting the suggest search terms button opens a panel, you describe your area of interest, and Google generates and compares a list of related trends with follow up prompts (Google Trends Help, 2026).
Google labels these generative features as experimental and warns that they can display inaccurate information, so treat the suggestions as a starting list. The value is in the breadth of terms it surfaces, particularly when you are new to a category and do not yet know the vocabulary your customers use. Verify every suggested term in the normal Trends interface before it influences a content plan.
What are the most common Google Trends mistakes?
The most common mistakes all come from reading the index as if it were real data. Trends is a relative measure designed for comparison, and each mistake below is a version of forgetting that.
| Mistake | Why it misleads | Do this instead |
|---|---|---|
| Treating 100 as a search volume | It is the peak of the selected window, not a count | Use Trends for direction, a keyword tool for volume |
| Comparing a term against itself on two charts | Each chart is scaled separately, so the axes are not comparable | Put both terms on one comparison view |
| Acting on a Breakout label immediately | A 5,000 per cent rise can be a news spike that disappears | Check the five year line before committing content |
| Using the twelve month default only | One year cannot separate a trend from a seasonal rhythm | Switch to five years for anything seasonal |
| Ignoring the category filter | A term can mean different things in different categories | Set the category that matches your industry |
Prefer to see the trend work already done?
DigiFix publishes the sites and campaigns it has worked on, including the keyword and content decisions behind each result.
What does this look like for an Australian business?
The starting point
A Melbourne air conditioning installer has a steady website and one service page that has never ranked. The owner suspects the whole category is slowing down and is considering spending more on ads instead.
What DigiFix would do, in order
- Compare cooling and heating terms over five years to see the annual rhythm, in week one
- Check the rising related searches to find new phrasing customers have started using, in week one
- Look at regional interest across Victorian regions to see where the installer actually has demand, in week two
- Publish the seasonal cooling page two to three months before the peak rather than during it, in weeks two to four
- Split the single service page into separate pages for repair, installation and servicing, in month two
- Re-run the comparison each quarter and add a page for any term that has risen three quarters in a row, ongoing
What it costs to wait
Moving budget to ads because a category looks flat, without checking the direction of demand, treats a seasonal dip as a permanent decline. The installer pays for clicks in the quiet months and misses the peak months because the page was never written. Ten minutes in Trends prevents the whole mistake.
See how this plays out for your services
DigiFix combines search trends with keyword research, technical work and content to build pages that are ready before demand arrives.
What other Google Trends questions do owners ask?
Is Google Trends free to use?
Google Trends is free and needs no account for the main Explore interface. The additional dataset is accessed through BigQuery on Google Cloud, which is a paid platform, so costs there depend on how much data you query. For most Australian small businesses the free interface covers everything needed for content and campaign planning.
Does Google Trends show real search volumes?
Google Trends does not show real search volumes in the main interface. Values are normalised and scaled to 0 to 100, so a score of 100 is the peak for that term within the selected time range and geography. Use a keyword tool such as Google Keyword Planner for volume estimates, and reserve Trends for direction and seasonality.
How far back does Google Trends data go?
Google Trends data starts in 2004, which is more than twenty years of history in the free interface. In practice anything beyond five years is rarely useful for planning content, because search behaviour shifts with the platform itself. The BigQuery dataset works on much shorter windows, covering a rolling five years at daily grain and one year at hourly grain.
Can Google Trends tell me what people will search next?
Google Trends describes the past rather than predicting the future, but seasonality makes short term patterns reasonably reliable. If a term has peaked in the same month for three consecutive years, planning content around that pattern is sensible. What Trends cannot do is forecast a genuinely new behaviour, which is why it is used alongside category knowledge and your own enquiry data.
What is the difference between a topic and a search term?
A search term in Trends is the exact phrase entered, while a topic groups every term that shares the same meaning, including misspellings and other languages. Choosing the topic is usually the better option because it captures the full demand without listing every variation. Use a search term when the wording itself matters, such as testing one suburb name against another.
Can I use Google Trends data in a report or presentation?
Google Trends data can be exported, embedded and cited, and Google publishes guidance on how to do it properly. Use the export button to download the underlying values as a CSV, which is far more useful in a report than a screenshot. When citing the data, name the tool, the term, the geography and the date range, so the same chart can be reproduced later.
Google Trends is most valuable as a habit rather than a project. Ten minutes a month keeps a content plan aligned with where demand is actually going, which is cheaper than discovering a missed season afterwards. For broader context on how the site supports that work, see the technical SEO guide, the guide to optimising website content and the SEO frequently asked questions guide. More worked examples are published on the DigiFix blog, and you can read about the team behind the work.
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