Jolly Hockeysticks...

Google Trends is a nifty little tool that allows you to track how often specific search terms are being entered into the Google search engine.

It shows over the last few years whether the volume of searches for any particular search term is increasing or decreasing. It doesn't tell you exactly how many searches are taking place, but be patient, advertisers - we're pretty cofident you'll be able to buy that information from the G-men soon enough..

Up to five terms can be compared. To test drive it, we compared the number of people searching for Chantelle (apologies to non-UK readers, she won Celebrity Big Brother here recently -- actually, apologies to UK viewers too for having to put up with her), and Madonna. The results were as follows. Madonna is in blue (so last year, darling).

So for a short while Chantelle was a much more popular search term than Madonna! But as the brokers like to explain,  past performance is no indicator of future results. Madge is the blue chip, as time will tell....

More advanced queries can be done as well - see the FAQs for details. Google also helpfully puts markers next to major news events that are about that search query, helping to explain surges. Data can also be sorted by time, language, geographic location, etc.

There seems no doubt that Google Trends will quickly become a must-have bookmark for every PR and marketing person worldwide.

Learning: What's hot and what's not?

Yes, looking at how celebrities compare is fun. But we have a day job to get on with...

Here's a round-up of the key learning trends according to Google searches. Globally the number of people searching for e-learning is on a gradual decline as can be seen below.

Google trends is most interesting when you compare terms. We compared Moodle (the free open source LMS) with Saba (the most certainly not free commerical LMS) and got the following results. Moodle is in blue, Saba is in red. The flags relate to Google news items on those dates.
 

Moodle continues to go from strength to strength and has overtaken Saba as a search term. Open source is killing the commericals -- we've been saying it for months. With its adoption by the Open University here in the UK, we confidently expect this rising Moodle trend to continue. When can we buy stock? Oh yeah, open source, we keep forgetting...

E-learning is so last month

We looked at three buzzwords: blogs, podcasting and mobile learning. What does google trends show about these?

The largest search term as you would expect is blogs. This shows a steady growth over the last three years. Blogs as a search term was used less at the start of 2004 than e-learning but now it dwarfs e-learning. Blogs is the blue line. E-learning is the, well,  flatline...

Mobile learning was not used as a search term enough to register a trend a few years ago. Then it increased rapidly a year or so ago, but has now stabilised as can be seen below.

Podcasting has also grown significantly but is lower now than it was during the hype a year ago. However, it is now as popular a search term as e-learning.

So what?

Well, google trends is a bit like google earth. Blows your mind and lots of fun for a few minutes, then you start wondering how you would actually use it for something useful, then get back to work. Very useful if you're in the business of commenting on trends - hence the appeal to us. If you're a learning professional inside an organisation, you could use it to compare gurus worth searching for, for tools, LMSs, authoring software...once there's enough search volume for them to break through the barriers.. We are keeping at eye out for "rapid e-learning" which is currently too low for Google to measure. However, it is a hot topic as shown by the success of our very own Rapid E-learning Store.

We will keep a regular eye on the e-learning market using Google trends and keep you informed.

Stay posted! We may end up running a book on this...