Google puts Trends in search results: challenging Twitter?

Tue 29 September 2009 10:10, Editors

Google has yet again launched another feature. Today they launch something which should be competing with Twitters 'hot topics': Hot Trends in the search results.

Searches on topics which are 'hot' will now be accompanied by a special trending graph at the bottom of the search results. The graph shows the popularity of the topic, the "hotness" and a link to Google Trends where you can get more information.

The graph will only show on topics which are within the top 100 of Google Trends. For now that will only be the top trends coming from the US and Japan. You will be able to see the results on the .com-site when you search for a hot topic, but there won't be any European trends graphed for now.

On Twitter some UK-SEO's said they did see the results on Google UK but that they were US topics. There's a point in which the UK SERPS being filled with .com results suddenly makes sense ;). I haven't seen that myself yet, but if you're in the UK and you have sent us a screenshot!

Along with this feature Google has decreased the number of trending topics on the Hot Trends homepage from a hundred to forty.

With the change Google answers the need of real time. People want to know what's going on right now. And though this isn't real time it is something which adresses the need for being trendy. And who knows Google might even challenge Twitter's hot topics with this feature. Getting into the trending topics list has suddenly become more interesting.

Update: thanks to @rishil we now have a screen shot of the trending graph working in Google.co.uk. Check it out here, thanks Rishil!

<Growing number of "Potentially d...

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Comments (2)

- Seth Rietdijk
- [website]
Like I stated before I do not really like the path Google is now walking. Instead of being innovative they start to copy other projects and integrate it into their own engine. The problem is that by that, Google somewhat is killing what made them great: simple but (almost) brilliant/fast searchresults.

Also, realtime can also be used for spamming indices with non-events and gossip instead of real news. In my opinion they should NOT integrate it into the regular search but creat an extra collumn in which they can show realtime versus regular search. Let the visitors decide which they will like the most.

Di 29 sep 2009, 11:29
- Coolest Geek
- [website]
Excellent, thanks for the info. I agree the race is on for real time search, and I think Twitter actually beat the big G to it!

Wo 30 sep 2009, 14:29

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