Spotting the trends

Google Trends is a fascinating free tracking tool.  The EEE PC is currently getting a lot of attention in the UK so I will use that for our first example.  Google Trends gives the first graph below.  This shows the searches for a chosen term relative to the total number of Google searches as displayed over a period of time.   If we look at the graph Google Trends creates then we can see that the EEE PC is currently a hot topic.

Now let us look at the Google Trend data, but this time compare three different topics.  I'm going to pick up on Microsoft's current interest in Yahoo and use Microsoft, Yahoo and Google as my search topics to give the second graph below.

One look at this graph reveals why Microsoft are so interested in joining of forces with Yahoo.  Of course Google Trends could be viewed as a toy and Google do give some disclaimers on it, but it does show a side of online technology that I believe will come more to the fore in future.  The politicians at the very least will always want to track the trends.  Try it for yourself at www.google.com/trends.