If Google Trends Doubles?

[JoshBowers2012]

If google shows a search trend doubling in a time frame, does that mean the amount of searches doubled?

As in: 2006 was ranked at a 50 on trends and the 100 is 2013 and in 2013 10,000 searches were made, does that mean around 5,000 searches were made in 2006?

[TimKelsey]

Hi Josh,

Unfortunately, Google doesn't make it that easy to reverse-calculate search volume from Google Trends. Google Trends is really a comparison tool, not a tool for determining exact searches.

The data you see is the percentage of search volume for a particular keywords compared to the total search volume of all keywords in the region (or language or any other parameters) you've set. This is then normalized on a scale 0-100. Kind of confusion so let's take a simple example.

• 2010: Searches for your keyword - 5, Global searches for all keywords - 100, % of total - 5%
• 2011: Searches for your keyword - 8, Global searches for all keywords - 80, % of total - 10%
• 2012: Searches for your keyword - 10, Global searches for all keywords - 120, % of total - 8.3%

So Google Trends would show the change from 2010 to 2011 as doubling, but the search volume for you keyword didn't double - only the percentage did because total search volume went down. And it would show the 2011 to 2012 trend as dropping even though searches for your keyword went because global search increase much more than your keyword.

On the Google Trends graph, 2010 would show as 1, 2011 would be 100, and 2012 would be about 70. Each year the search volume for your keyword increased, but Google Trends wouldn't show this because it's compared to the total search volume for the region.

This is way oversimplified, but hopefully you get the idea behind how it works.

Tim

[JoshBowers2012]

Thanks Tim.

Hopefully someday they'll give me what I want: Historical Data It would be nice to have an idea about how search numbers change over periods of years.