The official Google Research blog has recently posted an interesting article, On the Predictability of Search Trends.

The post talks about how Google uses historical data to predict the search volume of certain terms during a certain time period.

As we see that many of the search trends are predictable, we are introducing today a new forecasting feature in Insights for Search, along with a new version of the product. The forecasting feature is applied to queries which are identified as predictable (see, for instance, basketball or the trends in the Automotive category) and then shown as an extrapolation of the historical trends and search patterns.

The post is a follow up to an earlier post from back in April of this year, Predicting the Present with Google Trends. This post included the white paper of the same name that is a MUST READ for all search marketers.

The post from April has some interesting information in it as well.

Google queries in a category like “Automotive/Vehicle Shopping” during the first few weeks of March may help predict what actual March automotive sales will be like when the official data is released halfway through April.

Very interesting information and a great tool that I have been using since it has been launched.

Google Trends
Google Insights for Search

Photo Credit: Dullhunk