I believe Google Trends data is a goldmine that we have barely scratched the surface of.

Think of traditional marketplace data. For example, data coming from Walmart Superstores.

We can see the most popular products being sold at Walmart and derive insights from that data, but those insights are inherently limited by physical shelf space within a store and the number of people able to afford a given product.

When looking at data coming from a marketplace with a seemingly unlimited number of product options, like Amazon, we can derive insights that were previously unachievable due to the limits imposed by in-store shelf space. But, this data is still limited by the number of people able to afford a given product.

Social media is a source of consumer data in which the consumer does not have to spend any money in order to receive the final product (content). However, the limiting factor with data coming from social media is that the majority of content consumed today is via an algorithmic feed.

The decision making process behind someone actively searching the shelves of Walmart, or the pages of Amazon for a product, is entirely different than someone consuming a piece of content because it appeared in their social media feed.

Then, there is Google Trends. Google Trends data is a bit of a wildcard in comparison to the previous examples.

When a user visits Google they actively decide what they want to see. They type a term into the search bar because they want to learn more about it. This is completely different than how they might interact with social media and more similar to the decision making process within a traditional marketplace.

Google is also not limited to consumable products. On Google, you can search for a good or service in the same way as you can in a traditional marketplace, but you can also search for information about any subject or idea. The limit is the sum total of human knowledge.

On top of this, Google is completely free to use. This means that the scale of the data from Google Searches completely morphs the data coming from Walmart or Amazon.

For reference, the number of Google searches made in a day (~15 billion) is roughly 1250 times larger than the number of Amazon purchases made in a day (~12.5 million) and roughly 405 times larger than the number of Walmart purchases made in a day (~37 million).

My point is not that data from other marketplaces is not valuable. My point is that Google Trends data is completely different, in a way that I think is incredibly valuable.

TLDR: Google Trend data gives us insight into what people would buy if they walked into a store and everything was free.