As an online marketing professional, there are a variety of tools in my bag of tricks that help me analyze consumer trends and get a feel for what’s going on in the world of search engines. Google Trends happens to be one of the tools that I adore and live by.

Unfortunately, it looks like someone is playing games with Google Trends again, which has skewed some of my data for the day. I would cry aloud but nobody can hear me (horror movie flashback).

What leads me to believe the top 20 search queries are skewed? Well, aside from the #1 spot being taken by something I will not mention on my site, the other 19 slots make no sense at all. For example, why are the following 15 search queries appearing anywhere on Google Trends? Do you really think everyone on the net is flocking to the internet to search for, of all things, grocery stores? I know where my local stores are and if you’re human, eat food, and you’re not a bedouin you should too. Also, why are 15 of the 20 Google Trends plural not singular? To me it looks like one person’s doing.

Gas stations, comic book stores, grocery stores, dentists, gift shops,
instructional videos, pet stores, post offices, kennels, used books, gyms,
car dealerships, malls, hospitals, police stations

My suspicion is that someone with a lot of time on their hands simply ran automated queries to trick Google’s computers. According to Google: “The Hot Trends list is automatically generated by machines and algorithms that detect hot or breaking queries”.

In conclusion, I feel that whoever did this could have had fun without using racial slurs (#1 position that I covered up in red). This is grounds for a swift roundhouse kick to the dome.

Sincerely,
Aaron Schoenberger
The Brainchild Group

PS — WE LOVE GOOGLE AND IF GOOGLE WAS A HUMAN, A FEMALE IN MY CASE, I WOULD MARRY HER. I had to get that out there as it’s the only way to profess my love for Google Analytics, Google Trends, Google Voice, Google Business Email and everything else the big G puts out. 🙂