Trends You Never Knew Were There: Google Correlate

As reported in June's SearchEngineNew.com - Here's a new tool. Why are we covering it again you may ask? Because if you missed it then pay attention this time around - this tool is cool.

"It all started with the flu," says Google. The tool looks at a search term's time trends. Then it finds other search terms with the same time trends, and shows you a list of them.

Sometimes they make perfect sense, such as influenza rate and flu home remedies - as the volume of one goes up, so goes the other. But sometimes there's no thematic link at all, as when searches on emotional eating go up and down with the same frequency as short puffy prom dresses and crappie fishing techniques:

In that case it's just about time of year.

A big thank you to Glenn Livingston for the above stellar example. Glenn also notes:

• These correlations happen even if there's no semantic connection, and no "people who search on X eventually search on Y" connection.
• This does give you fascinating insights into your own market.
• There's no direct correlation here in search volume:  you can have a high correlation between keywords X and Y even though X may get literally 1,000 times as many searches as Y.
• It's tempting, but wrong, to think that if this tool shows correlation between X and Y, that "everyone who searches on X is therefore also concerned about Y".

The announcem...