Friday, September 26, 2014

Google hot topics delivered to your inbox

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Google Trends is a helpful place to see what people are searching for around the world. You can keep up with hot searches in real time, or take a historical look at trends dating back to 2004. Trends can be really useful if you're a business owner trying to understand what people are saying about your brand, if you're a student researching a topic for sociology class, or if you’re simply trying to figure out when "doge" became a thing. But without doing your own exploration on the Trends website, it can be tough to find the interesting—and sometimes surprising—topics the world is searching for. Starting today, it’s easier to get just the right insights at just the right time with email notifications.

You can now "Subscribe" to any search topic, Hot Searches for any country, or any U.S. monthly Top Chart.

For example, I lived in the U.K. for three years and I wanted a way to quickly and easily keep up with the really big things happening there. I set up an email notification to tell me about the "hottest" Hot Searches in the U.K. and now I get occasional emails about major local trends -- from the London Marathon to Britain's Got Talent.


Navigate to any part of Google Trends and you'll see a new option to "Subscribe"
You can also subscribe to email notifications about search interest in any topic you'd like. I'm a Liverpool F.C. fan, so I set up a subscription to get notifications about searches for the team. I don't always have as much time as I'd like to keep on the daily scores, trades and gossip, so Trends email notifications have been a great way to make sure I catch the big news. For example, this week I got an email telling me searches for Liverpool F.C. spiked by 169%(!):


Seeing this email I immediately got excited to find out what the buzz was about. Looking at Google Trends, I can see this is the biggest spike in the past year by far. As football fans know, this week Liverpool F.C. beat Manchester City. It turns out this is the team's 10th straight victory and puts them in striking distance of a championship title for the first time in 24 years. Busily working away on this feature, I didn't realize just how big a deal this was, and the email from Trends was a great reminder to tune in.

To my disappointment, not everyone is a Liverpool F.C. fan, but you're welcome to subscribe to any topic or country you'd like (even Manchester City). If you decide you’re getting too many notifications, there’s an easy “unsubscribe” link in every email, or you can manage your preference on the Trends website in the new "subscriptions" section. Let us know what you think by clicking "Feedback" anywhere in Google Trends.

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