Google Trends now charts site traffic
Google Trends has always been an intriguing service. In essence, it shows search volume on specific keywords which you can select. Using Google Trends is easy - simply specify one or more keywords (separated by comma) and click “Search Trends.” This is a great way to see if Britney Spears is still a popular topic for net users, a time line of news stories related to her and which countries find her the most interesting.
Because Google Trends measures, well, trends, there aren’t any numbers associated with the graphs. Google keeps this information hidden for competitive reasons.
Now, Google Trends has become even more interesting.
Instead of looking at keyword trends you can now get site traffic trends. Let’s say you wanted to know which news site was the most popular between CNN, Fox, MSNBC and the uber popular Huffington Post. Simply go to Google Trends and type in those site urls separated by commas and click search.
The search reveals that CNN.com is on top of the heap, which personally isn’t surprising to me. What is surprising, though, was that MSNBC was more popular than Fox, and that the Huffington Post, one of the world’s popular blogs, barely registered.
