Google Trends
Google Trends is a Google tool that shows how interest in a search topic rises and falls over time and from place to place. It works from a sample of real Google searches, divides each data point by all searches in that place and time, and scales the result from 0 to 100. It shows interest, not search counts.
Source: Trends Help, FAQ about Google Trends data, checked October 29, 2026
What Google Trends means for your business
Google notes that two regions can show the same search interest and still have different numbers of searches. So we'd use Trends to see when interest in your service climbs each year, or which of two phrases people lean toward, and get sizes from somewhere else.
Quiet searches are where Trends is least reliable. Google says Trends shows terms with very few searches as 0, and that it adds small random noise to protect privacy, which shows up most on those same low-interest searches. A sudden spike on a niche phrase can be that noise. Google's advice is to compare against a common term, and we'd do that before reading anything into a spike.
Google's FAQ says Trends leaves out searches made by Google's own products, including the internal searches AI Mode and AI Overviews run. So a rise in Trends is people searching, and nothing in it counts AI answers.
If you can see your busy season in Trends but can't tell whether it reaches your phone, what we report each quarter puts your calls and bookings first, with the AI numbers beside them.
Last reviewed October 29, 2026. All terms
How AI answers it today
On October 29, 2026, Google's AI Overview quoted Wikipedia and cited Google's guides, SEO tool blogs and YouTube, but not Google's Trends data FAQ. ChatGPT explained the 0 to 100 scale and linked only to Google Trends; neither mentioned which searches Trends leaves out.
Our run through ChatGPT and Google's AI Overview, October 29, 2026. A sample, not what every buyer sees.
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