Google Trends

Google Trends shows relative search interest for any term or topic over time, by country down to city level, built from an anonymised sample of real Google searches. Journalists, SEOs and marketers use it to spot seasonality, compare brands and catch breaking topics. It is a free public tool with no account required and no paid version.

What the free plan gives you

Explore lets you look up a query or topic and see interest over time, interest by region, related topics and related queries, with the data normalised on a 0 to 100 scale relative to all searches. Trending Now surfaces search spikes within minutes of an event happening in the real world, filtered by location. You can set time ranges from the past hour to 2004 onward, filter by category and by web, image, news, shopping or YouTube search, and download any chart as CSV or embed it. Everything is available without signing in; a Google account only adds saved searches and email subscriptions to trending topics.

Where the free plan stops

There is nothing to buy, so the limits are about the data itself. Values are relative, not absolute search volumes, so you cannot read off how many people searched for something. Google adds statistical noise to protect privacy, which means low-volume queries can look erratic or show no data at all. There is no official API for bulk pulls, and comparisons in one chart are capped at five terms.

Who it suits

Anyone who needs a quick answer on whether interest in a topic is rising, falling or seasonal, or which of two names people search for more. If you need real monthly volumes, keyword difficulty or SERP data, pair it with a keyword tool such as Ahrefs, Semrush or the free Bing Webmaster Tools.