Do you like Google Trends but find that having to read search topic rankings yourself is too tedious and stressful? Don’t worry — like the kind and benevolent overlord it is, Google has come up with a solution. The Google Beat, produced internally by Google, will offer regular updates on a few of the week’s most popular search terms in the U.S beginning today.
The valuable thing that Google Beat provides is some brief context as to why a particular search term is trending, which is something anyone who regularly checks analytics will appreciate. (Like, right now, “movies and advertising” is trending as the #3 hot search, just beating out “glenn beck rally,” for no apparent reason. Weirdness.) For example, when discussing the recent egg recall affecting the U.S., a graphic breaks down search volume state-by-state, and host Anne Espiritu also mentions a few other search terms that spiked as a result, like “salmonella.”
However, because it’s a weekly series as opposed to a daily series, Google Beat will never be useful to those who actually regularly follow Internet trends. After all, everything covered in this first episode — the egg recall, the Miss Universe pageant and the anniversary of the 19th Amendment — is at least 24 hours old. That makes it old news, at least for anyone who’s watching a web series about search terms.
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