Google Trends: find what are people searching for online
Identifying what people are searching for online is best achieved by using Google Trends to uncover popular seasonal topics and real-time search data. You can find high-performing blog ideas by exploring specific keywords within the tool and filtering results by "Rising" or "Top" queries to see what is currently capturing interest. Once you have identified these trending themes, cross-reference them with Google’s "People also ask" section to turn raw data into direct questions that your content can answer.
Simon (l) and Rachael (r) talking together on a brand photo shoot
Why understanding search intent is the secret to a high-performing website
It's not simply enough to have a website; you need to be creating content that will help your website be found by Google in a search result. We want to ensure that we can answer your questions on blogging, blog topics, structuring blog articles, improving existing blogs & tracking your progress too.
Top ten takeaway ideas and advice
Google is constantly crawling your website to assess quality, so focus on content that truly answers your audience's questions
Visible search results drive more traffic, which is the engine for hitting business goals like leads and enquiries
Google Trends is a powerful, free tool that requires no account and helps you stop guessing what to write about
Identify seasonal trends that recur predictably, such as “Chelsea Flower Show" in May, to harness spikes in traffic
Write high-quality content once and then improve it year-on-year rather than starting from scratch
Use historical data (you can search as far back as 2004) to distinguish between long-term trends and short-term fads
Be prepared to go down a few rabbit holes as Google Trends is an iterative process that requires some digging
Filter your results in Google Trends by "Rising" or "Top" to see what is gaining momentum right now versus what is consistently popular
Cross-reference your findings with "People also ask" on a main Google search to find more fully-formed questions for your headlines
Treat Google Trends as the starting point for your research, then use those insights to develop specific blog titles
1. Why is it so hard finding out what people are searching for online?
One of the biggest challenges that we have when it comes to producing website or blog content is 'what do people want to see?'. If we don't know what people are searching for online it is very difficult to write content that will bring them to our websites.
As we've said before, Google is constantly crawling website pages across the internet to assess the quality of their content. If it's great content that answers people's questions or provides the info they're looking for, it will likely be more visible in search results. Being visible in a search result drives more traffic to your website. The more traffic you get, the better you can hit your business goals like leads, enquiries or sales.
So before writing anything on our websites we need to understand what are people looking for via Google or a search engine in the first place that would then lead them to the content on our website.
Key ideas:
Google uses complex algorithms to crawl and assess the quality of your website based on how well it answers searchers' questions
It can feel like guesswork trying to identify the exact topics that will drive traffic and help you meet your business goals
Without the right tools, it is difficult to know if you are creating content that people actually want to read or simply shouting into a vacuum
2. Why is it so hard finding out what people are searching for online?
My top tip for working out what people are searching for online in order to write better content via your blog is to use Google Trends.
Google Trends allows you to see what's trending as well as popular across Google Searches. It's free and you don't need an account.
The reason Google Trends is so powerful is that it allows you to identify popular seasonal trends. These are searches that tend to recur predictably every year or particular period. If you write good quality content on your blog that helps people with queries related to these seasonal searches, you can harness traffic on an exponentially bigger level, plus the partner is more likely to appear next time, meaning you don't need to write the content from scratch (you can improve it).
Key ideas:
Google Trends is the ultimate free tool for uncovering what is popular and trending across search engines right now
The platform is particularly effective for spotting seasonal trends that repeat predictably every year
By aligning your content with these known search patterns, you can drive exponentially more traffic to your website through seasonal peaks
Make your website work harder for your brand
At Wildings Studio, we specialise in helping design-conscious brands—from interior designers and architects to garden designers and boutique hotels—create a digital presence that truly performs. If you want to dive deeper into how to attract your ideal clients, explore our latest insights on SEO & Content Marketing.
Our core Website design service is designed to turn your expertise into an enquiry-generating machine. Ready to elevate your online presence? We would love to hear about your project—get in touch to enquire today.
3. How can I use Google Trends to find out what people are searching for online?
This is a very basic introduction to Google Trends, how it works in overview and some of its basic features that you can use to help you start to understand what people are searching for online via Google and search engines. Once you’ve got the hang of this you can then use it to generate blog titles for your website (and obviously write the necessary content!).
What can Google Trends do?
Google Trends can show you what people are searching for almost in real time, which is handy if you want to create content in the moment that responds to current events. What we're more interested in is the historical data. Google Trends allows you to go back to 2024 and see long term trends.
Trends also allows you to explore freely if you want to dig into keywords, topics and the data to get more granular or discover trends closely related to your business. Once you have the info, you can filter it by 'Rising' or 'Top' so that you can pick apart what's seasonal or a fad from what's most popular overall.
Things to bear in mind before using Google Trends
Trends is pretty user friendly but the main thing to remember is that you don't get answers on a plate; you need to be prepared to go down a few rabbit holes and circle back in order to land on the key insights. Once you've used it a few times, you'll get the hang of it, but it's an iterative process.
The other thing to bear in mind is that it doesn't generally produce blog titles. You tend to get two-word key phrases or the odd one or two longer search queries. However, you can then extrapolate from those and generate your blog titles.
How to start using Google Trends
Where can I find Google Trends and what are it’s functions?
Navigate to Google Trends via trends.google.com or google.com/trends
Head to the Explore tab trends.google.com/trends/explore
At this point there's a few things you can do:
Put your search term in the search bar
Adjust the time period - examining a month for the previous year allows you to get an idea of seasonal searches
Filter by a specific category - we find Homes & Gardens particularly helpful when thinking about interior designers or garden designers
Using Related topics and related queries in Google Trends
If we put in the search term 'garden design' for the past 12 months, we can explore the topic via ‘Related topics’, which as you can imagine means that users searching for your term also searched for these topics. Some related topics (at time of writing) include:
Terraced house (topic)
New construction (topic)
Backyard (topic)
Garden design (topic)
House & Garden (magazine)
As you can see, most of these are still fairly high level, so you need to click on them and start to explore what’s going on behind these trends in order to get at the specific searches or events that were going on.
There's also a ‘Related queries’ area, which means users searching for your term also searched for these queries. Related queries include: heartwood garden design, richard miers garden design, dig garden design and ai landscape design free.
As you can see, the topics are often quite broad and high level, so you will need to click on them and explore what’s going on behind them - this is where you may go down a few rabbit holes, but it’s part of the process. Sometimes it will be because they are high profile people or businesses; sometimes it’s because of a high profile event; other times it will e because something went viral on social media.
Discovering insights via Top and Rising filters in Google Trends
You can now filter related topics and related queries via ‘Top’ and ‘Rising’. Top means the most popular search queries overall so allows you to rank ideas and avoid pursuing a one-off trend.
Rising means that these are the queries with the biggest increase in search frequency since the last time period. This is helpful as it tells you search terms that are more seasonal and so more likely to crop again in future. Pay attention to these as content on these topics is more evergreen, which is what we want, as it’s far easier to curate material that popular in a predictable way rather than constantly generate new items about whose popularity we are less sure.
Additionally, certain Rising queries are marked with ‘Breakout’ which means they had a particularly significant increase - they spiked. These are either extremely popular or reflected an isolated incident, such as a new event.
How to create blog post titles from Google Trends
Once you've dug in and out of the topics and queries you should have a short list of quality topics. It's now time to turn these into blog titles. A good place to start is to type them in Google and then consult the ‘People also asked’ box.
People also ask suggests the questions that people commonly search for on Google and are questions related to your search terms. These are a helpful as a next step because you get a more fully formed question than in Google Trends.
Key ideas:
Start by exploring specific keywords or broad topics and then filter the data by region, time period or category for better accuracy
Pay close attention to "Rising" and "Top" queries to distinguish between emerging interests and consistently popular search terms
Use the data as a foundation for further research by looking at "People also ask" results to turn short phrases into fully-formed blog titles
Final thoughts on Google Trends
Overall, Google Trends is a really really good starting place for what people are searching for online and then developing your blog titles further for writing up. Use Google Trends as the starting place for researching and producing your content.
Frequently Asked Questions
-
To find trending topics, use Google Trends to search for broad terms like "interior architecture" or "sustainable kitchen design" and filter by the UK. Look for "Rising" queries to see what specific styles or materials are gaining traction this season, then create content that answers those specific interests.
-
Yes, Google Trends is a completely free tool provided by Google. You do not even need an account to start researching what your audience is searching for, making it an accessible way for design-conscious brands to improve their SEO and content marketing strategy.
-
It is best to check Google Trends at the start of every season or when planning your quarterly content calendar. This allows you to stay ahead of predictable search spikes in sectors like landscape gardening or hospitality, ensuring your website remains relevant and visible.
Expand your knowledge: more insights on SEO and digital strategy:
About the author:
Simon Cox is the co-founding director (along with his wife, Rachael Cox) at Wildings Studio, a branding, website design and content marketing studio in Torquay, UK. He’s the writer and editor of the Wildings Studio blog which you’re currently reading. Simon is also responsible for the Wildings Studio content marketing services. Simon blogs regularly on topics to do with the core Wildings Studio services on branding, website design and content marketing (blogging). He’s passionate about helping small business develop great content that answers the questions people type in Google in order to get found online (SEO).
In this article:
Why understanding search intent is the secret to a high-performing website
Top ten takeaway ideas and advice
Free SEO topic discovery formula
Why is it so hard finding out what people are searching for online?
Why is it so hard finding out what people are searching for online?
How can I use Google Trends to find out what people are searching for online?
About Wildings Studio
Thoughtful, beautiful branding and websites for design-led businesses
Wildings is a website designer for small businesses offering website design. Based in South Devon, UK, we deliver small business website design for design-conscious brands like garden designers, interior designers, architects, circular ethos restaurants, speciality coffee shops, organic cafés and boutique hotels.
