Page 27 - Decoding Decisions ~ Making sense of the messy middle

27 CHAPTER 3 INVESTIGATING THE MESSY MIDDLE

Google Trends

All charts in this chapter have been generated in Google Trends and,
because it is a publicly available tool, all the charts can be easily recreated.

To make comparisons between terms easier, Google Trends normalises
search data by time period, location, and topic. It therefore displays the
relative popularity of a term over time, not absolute.

Numbers represent search interest relative to the highest point on the
chart for the given region and time. A value of 100 is the peak popularity for
the term.

Due to a change in the methodology of Google Trends on 1st January 2011,
relating to improved geographical assignment, the majority of the charts
we feature in this chapter begin on this date.

By using double quotation marks around search terms, for example
“gift ideas”, the results include the exact phrase, possibly with words
before or after, like “birthday gift ideas”.

Search Tips for Trends is a must-visit for anyone wanting to have a play
around in Google Trends.

The way people use search has

slowly increased in range and

complexity over time.