What’s trending? Find out with Google Trends

At the end of the year, many teachers are looking for ideas for a student project. If you want a project that is timely, how about checking out Google Trends. Google Trends showcases what Google searches are trending around the world. It is a very interesting way to see what people are talking about.

To start, go to trends.google.com. Once you’re there, you can jump right in by entering a keyword or a topic in the Explore bar, or see some examples:

 

Here I searched for COVID-19 vaccine. These are the results:

You can filter by using the menus at the top. Or scroll down to see more detailed information including interest by subregion, here the United States.

And then, scrolling further, you can see related topics and related searches:

 

The Google Trends homepage has lots of cool things available, including stories curated by the News Lab at Google that provide additional insights found in the data, daily Search Trends, and one of my favorites, the Year in Search.

 

Finally, one of the coolest features is where you can visualize the Hot Trends in real-time. First, open https://trends.google.com/trends/hottrends/visualize and then go to the bottom and change “All Regions” to United States (or whatever country or region you are studying):

 

Then, watch as the trends change in real-time. You can even make this into a screensaver!

 

How might you use Google Trends in your classroom?

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