Google Trends is the overlooked weapon in any SEO's free toolkit. While it doesn't show search volumes, its relative interest data is uniquely valuable for identifying seasonal patterns and validating whether a topic is growing or declining.
Best forValidating keyword seasonality, identifying trending topics, and comparing brand interest over time
Skip it ifYou need actual search volumes or keyword difficulty for content investment decisions
Google Trends pricing plans
- Partly checkedGoogle Trends: source information reviewed from trends.google.com and support.google.com on . No cost information on fetched vendor pages.
Pricing catches
No cost information on fetched vendor pages.
What Google Trends shows and what it does not
Shows
- Relative interest over time
- Seasonal patterns
- Comparisons between terms and regions
Does not show
- Absolute search volume
- Ranking difficulty
- Keyword lists at scale
Pros and cons
What you get
- Completely free — no account needed
- Shows seasonal trends and growing vs declining keyword interest
- Geographic breakdown shows where interest is strongest
What it costs you
- Shows relative interest (0-100) only — no actual search volume numbers
- Cannot compare absolute traffic between different keywords
- No keyword difficulty, SERP data, or competitive intelligence
Our verdict
Google Trends is uniquely useful for understanding whether a keyword is growing or declining. Pair it with Mangools or Semrush for actual volume data — Trends tells you the direction, paid tools tell you the size.