Know what people are searching for with Google Trends and Google Insights for Search

Are you interested to know what are the current hot topics and hot keywords that many people are searching for in Google?

You can actually track them using the awesome online tools namely Google Trends and Google Insights for Search.

In fact, Google Trends has been around for quite some times, and many webmasters, bloggers, twitterers, etc. are using it to come out with new hot topics of attraction for their websites. Google Insights for Search seems to be an enhanced version of Google Trends with more features.

Although Google Insights for Search is more advanced, Google Trends is still handy and useful, because you can access information from Google Hot Trends right in its front page.

Lets pay a visit to Google Trends:
http://www.google.com.sg/trends

As you can see, once you enter the website, you are displayed with a list of Hot Topics as well as a list of Hot Searches, and those are the most current info.

In fact, the RSS feeds of Google Hot Trends are available, including the following:

Global Server:-
http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends/atom/hourly

Singapore Server:-
http://www.google.com.sg/trends/hottrends/atom/hourly

Try search for a keyword in Google Trends, lets say "iceland", and click the "Search Trends" button, and you will see the search trends of your keyword.

When there is a surge in keyword search, it will be labelled, and at the side you can see the news headlines which probably able to give you a hint of why people are suddenly so interested to the topic during those particular periods of time.

You can also refine the result by region and by timeframe. At the bottom of the page shows where the searching people are residing in.

Now lets pay a visit to Google Insights for Search:
http://www.google.com/insights/search/

As you can see, you have more advanced tools to refine your search by comparison, filters (including filter by categories), etc.

And the result has more information, including these:

And last but not least, if you want to know what kind of keywords that have actually brought traffic to your own website, you can find the precise answer in Google Webmaster Tool.