Google Trends Now Tracking YouTube & Google News To Identify Trending Topics In Real-Time

In its biggest update since 2012, Google Trends announced a number of new updates today, including “minute-by-minute, real-time” data, the integration of YouTube and Google News data to determine trending topics, and a refreshed homepage.

According to the announcement on Google’s official blog, the real-time data is based on its more than 100-billion searches being performed every month.

[pullquote]”Many of these changes are based on feedback we’ve collected through conversations with hundreds of journalists and others around the world.”[/pullquote]

“You’ll be able to track the stories most people are searching for and where in the world interest is peaking,” writes Google Trends team member Nimrod Tamir, “Explore this data by selecting any time range in the last week from the date picker.”

Minute-by-Minute, Real-Time Data

In addition to tracking search trends, Google is now tracking trends on YouTube and Google News, and combining data from all three areas to determine which topics and stories are gaining the most traction.

Google says it is increasing the “breadth and coverage” of the data it is tracking for a deeper dive into niche topics in smaller geographies; and, for anyone wanting to do a deeper analysis of trends data, Google is publishing data-sets for specific topics on its Github page.

Data-sets Published on Google’s Github Page

Google has also launched a new “story-centric” homepage that focuses on the topics currently ranking.

Redesigned Homepage

Google says the new homepage has already launched in 28 countries, with a larger roll-out during the coming months.