Boston is on top in terms of searches about U.S. cities in Google, moving eight spots up since last month. New York City went down to second with a 73 search interest. Chicago comes in at third. Anyone can find that out in a matter of minutes with the new Top Charts feature launched by Google Trends on Wednesday.
The Google Trends Top Charts include monthly search data and ranks things, places, and people based on search interest. People who want to know what the hottest searches are do not have to wait for the annual Google Zeitgeist. The data is updated monthly and even though the feature is new, the data goes back to 2004.
The Top Charts page gives Internet users a glance of the top search items on more than 40 categories. There are charts listed in alphabetical order but these can be sorted into specific categories. The lists can also be explored to see detailed information about the lifespan of each item on the list.
"Top Charts is built on the Knowledge Graph, so the data shows interest in real-world things, not just keywords. When you look at a chart of sports teams and you see the Golden State Warriors, those rankings are based on many different related searches, like [gs warriors], [golden state bball] and [warriors basketball]," explained Google on its official blog.
Google pointed out that the Top Charts show the accurate rankings in terms of search volume but since no algorithm is perfect, there will be times when anomalies can be found.
Google Trends also has a new colorful real-time visualization tool for its Hot Searches. One can click on the "Visualize Hot Searches in full-screen" on the left side of the Google Trends panel and the topics will appear in a very colorful display. The layout of visualization can be customized to see as much as 25 searches simultaneously. The Hot Searches can also be filtered to show results from specific regions or country.
Google Trends also spruced up the look of its homepage by pushing more interesting items up front. The search box is also pegged to stay at the top whatever corner of the Google Trends users explore.
