How to use Google Trends to discover future bestsellers (and optimize the strategy for your e-commerce shop as well)

This post will teach how to predict the future.

And, more specifically, your online shop’s future.

For example, you can learn:

• Which products will be in demand in the next few months.
• Whether the business idea you’re thinking about will be viable.
• The topics you should write about in your blog (even if no one’s talking about them yet).

However, we’re not talking about fortune telling – we’re talking about Google Trends. 😉

Google Trends is a very powerful tool that allows you to make strategic decisions affecting your business with more certainty.

So read on, because in this post we’re going to tell you all about Google Trends, including the advantages it can bring to your e-commerce shop.

And to top it all off, we’ve also included an in-depth tutorial on how to get the most out of this tool.

Ready?

Off we go. 😉

👉 What Google Trends is and what kind of information it has to offer

Google Trends is one of the many free tools offered by Google.

But what is it used for?

It’s used for analyzing the search trends of a given keyword or topic over time.

For example, check out this graph:

What you can see here is not the search volume for AirPods (the number of searches when this keyword has been used), but the tendency.

And, as we’ll show you, this piece of information is invaluable for an e-commerce shop.

👉 How this tool is useful for an online store

To put it simply, Google Trends allows you to conduct a market survey.

A free and immediate one. 😉

Though there are no absolute certainties, this information will give you a much more solid foundation to define the next steps of your e-commerce shop strategy. 

Let’s take a look at a few examples.

✅ 1. Finding out the best products to invest in (or to ignore)

Say you own a food shop and you’re considering investing in vegan products.

How can you know if the investment will be worth it or you’ll end up losing money?

Google Trends gives you some insight.

For example, look at what happens if you google “vegan cheese”.

Despite the ups and downs, the interest for this product has grown unquestionably in the last five years.

Let’s now suppose that instead of food, you’re considering incorporating ingredients for cupcakes into your bakery section.

As it turns out, this doesn’t seem to be such a good idea. 😉

There’s no doubt they were trendy some years back, but that interest has dropped considerably since then.

This can also be applied to looking for short or long-term ideas for a dropshipping niche.

✅ 2. Spotting regular peaks of interest

Some items are bound to garner more sales during specific months of the year.

Among them are some predictable choices, such as the demand for poinsettias, which is quite minimal outside of the Christmas season.

But what if, instead of a specific plant, we were talking about fertilizers?

As the graph shows, searches start to grow as early as February and stay high until September.

Knowing this allows you to:

• Manage your orders more efficiently to avoid running out of stock at key moments throughout the year.
• Prepare your online advertising campaigns in advance on Google Ads and Facebook to stay a step ahead of your competitors.
• Plan a sales promotion for the end of the season to get rid of your remaining stock.

If you’re aware of the trends of all your products, you’ll be able to spot opportunities that may have otherwise gone unnoticed, which will help you create campaigns with higher conversion rates.

✅ 3. Optimizing your content strategy

If there’s growing interest for a particular product, it may be a good idea to include some related content on your editorial calendar.

Let’s use probiotic food as an example.

As can be seen in the graph, there’s been a steady increase in interest for these products.

And this means more and more people will be Googling information on them.

So, apart from including them in your catalog, you should plan a content strategy that revolves around this topic (why probiotics are important, what kind of food they’re contained in, etc.).

If you do it before your competitors, you’ll secure a higher position in the market and get a bigger share of the sales.

👉 Tutorial: How to use Google Trends to optimize your e-commerce shop strategy

The way Google Trends works isn’t exactly rocket science.

You just need to click here, type the target keyword in the search engine, and click “Enter”.

But this tool also has some options that may be very, very useful to you if you know how to make the most of them.

Let’s check them out.

✅ 1. Search term or keyword

After introducing a word in the search bar, two kinds of suggestions will pop up:

1. Search term: The search tendency for that specific keyword (e.g., “washing machine”).
2. Topic: This gathers data from different search terms related to the target keyword (if you use “electronic appliances” as the search term, Google will show you a selection of washing machines, ovens, etc.).

This will help you identify both specific products and markets with high demand.

✅ 2. Filters

There are various filters on top of the main graph:

• Time range: From 1 hour ago to the last five years, but you can also set a customized time range.
• Country: In order to compare the interest in a concept or topic across different countries. If you sell internationally, this is a must.
• Category: You can narrow your search down to a specific topic.
• Web search: Google Trends tells you how frequently a term is used in image searches on Google Shopping or YouTube.

Moreover, the information is sorted into different regions.

This data will allow you to segment your online advertising campaigns more accurately. If you own physical shops in different parts of the country, you can create different local SEO strategies for each of them.

✅ 3. Product comparison

Let’s suppose you’re considering investing in Huawei or Xiaomi products but don’t know which one suits you best.

In this case, the product comparison will come in handy.

Take a look:

With just a quick glance, we can see that Xiaomi is gaining quite a bit of ground on its competitor.

✅ 4. Related searches

At the very end, there’s a section featuring suggestions with related topics and searches.

This can give you good ideas for two things:

1. New content you could post.
2. Related products you could include in your catalog (to encourage cross-selling).

Furthermore, Google Trends tells you how the search tendency of each term has changed.

👉 How to interpret the tendencies shown by Google Trends (and invest more confidently)

Imagine you do a search on Google Trends and find out that interest in a given product has increased suddenly in the last few months.

This begs the question: Is it worth investing in, or is it just a fad?

Strictly speaking, there’s no way to tell for sure.

But if you follow these guidelines, you’ll be in good shape when it comes to distinguishing a good business idea from a bad one.

✅ 1. The graph’s shape

Overall, graphs on Google Trends can be sorted in four groups:

➡️ A. Fad

A product that takes the market by storm and generates a lot of interest in a short time but plummets soon afterwards.

For example, those fidget spinners from not so long ago.

If the interest in a product skyrockets, be cautious – it may get you lots of sales in the short term, but you’re risking a buildup of unsold stock once the demand dies off.

➡️ B. Trend

A similar graph to that of fads, although here the interest increases more slowly and stays high for a longer period, despite some ups and downs.

Robot vacuums are one of many examples.

In these cases, the product may either establish itself in the market or end up disappearing.

➡️ C. Stable

These are products that maintain constant interest over time. They tend to generate fewer (but more solid) sales.

Such is the case of, for example, the fashion sector.

This is a safe investment, although the competition is fiercer (and profits are, thus, smaller).

➡️ D. Increasing

A gold speck in the sand.

This kind of graphs shows a slow but safe increase in the interest in a product. This is the case of the probiotics mentioned above.

If you spot a trend like this and seize the opportunity before your competitors, you could establish yourself as a go-to supplier in the market.

✅ 2. Your website’s search data

As you’ve seen, Google Trends is a very powerful tool.

But there’s a slight “caveat”.

It doesn’t tell you the search trends within your own online shop.

And this piece of information is also important because it can give you much more specific data that can tell you whether or not your audience will be interested in a certain product.

The best way to get that information is by analyzing the evolution of the searches made by users on your website.

Remember the Xiaomi and Huawei graph we saw earlier?

Now imagine that the number of searches for Huawei phones on your website keeps growing (even though they’re still not in your catalog).

That means your customers are demanding Huawei phones, regardless of what the market says.

However, you need to have an intelligent search engine to access this kind of information – one that’s capable of generating web analytics reports.

If you want to see for yourself how powerful it can be to combine Google Trends with an intelligent search engine, click here to try Doofinder free for 30 days.

👉 Ready to foresee the future with Google Trends?

You’ve already seen what makes this Google tool so powerful.

And yet there are still so few shops using it.

So don’t waste another second – start predicting the future to get a step ahead of your competitors today! 😉