Google trends can cause a traffic jam on your blog

Let’s start with a quiz. What do the following phrases have in common?

• zombieland cameo
• tim pawlenty
• breast cancer awareness month
• badtz manu
• nap nanny
• cadillac ranch
• polanski victim testimony
• tsunami in samoa 2009 video
• christopher hitchens
• netflix acquiring content license

Today's Zombieland trend results as of 10:00 AM EST, Oct. 1, 2009.

I know, it looks like a crazy, random list! Give up? Those are the top 10 hot trends of today (literally, today, as in October 1, 2009). That means those phrases along with their like terms have been Google searched by people more than any other phrase. In fact, zombieland cameo, along with zombieland, zombieland cast, zombieland review, emma stone, and zombieland wiki, peaked 2 hours ago (approximately 8:30 AM EST). If you haven’t heard, Zombieland is a new movie that is out in theaters tomorrow, October 2, 2009. There’s a lot of media buzz around it and as a result, people are scrambling to learn more about the move and the cameos that are supposedly epic.

Anyway, I got that top 10 list from Google trends, a little known secret. There’s actually so much you can do there but if you want just a glimpse, with a click of a button, you can see the top 40 hottest trends searched on Google today or any previous day. There’s really no quicker way to see what people are looking for information on. This is almost in real time!

What does this have to do with blogging? Well, for one, I’m pretty sure one of those top 40 topics have some tie-in with your niche. If your blog is sports-related, there’s michael vick nike contract. For music, there’s madonna on letterman. How about investing, bbby stock, or hot kids toys, zhu zhu pets, or travel,waldorf astoria orlando? No matter what your niche is, there are probably more hot topics than you have time to write about!

As a result, using Google trends can give you several advantages:

1. It gives you an endless stream of topics for your blog.
2. There may be news related to your niche that you were unaware of.
3. If you choose a trendy topic to write about, you may end up with drawing a spike in traffic for your site.
4. Writing about trendy, related topics keeps you current and makes you more knowledgeable in your niche.
5. Fresh, trendy posts keep your reader base interested.

I simply wanted to introduce you to Google trends so you have another resource to tap. As I stated earlier, there’s so much more that you can do but I’ll leave that for your own discovery. Happy trend posting!

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