Web developer Antone Roundy posted an intriguing YouTube video on his blog last week about how he's using the free Google Trends service to create online news content that draws massive traffic to his Net Pulse News project.
This experiment, and its results, are significant enough that I think there's an important lesson and opportunity here for news organizations -- even though I wouldn't recommend that news orgs use Google Trends in exactly the same way that Roundy does.
First, watch the video. Bear in mind that Roundy is looking at this from a search optimization and commerce perspective, so his approach and goals may seem a bit alien to those with a strictly journalism mindset. Then consider a few points:
What if your news site (Web as well as mobile, which I've argued is crucial for growing audiences) offered more quickly produced and updated pages on hot topics that you could select from Google Trends based on your knowledge of your site's focus and your community's priorities?
What if you searched Google Trends daily for filtering keywords such as your city or state name, and looked for opportunities within those results not just to amplify the coverage you're already doing, but to spot opportunities for additional content that would be relevant enough to help you catch that wave of search visibility?
Using Google Trends to help inform and augment your editorial decisions and quickly create "searchbait" content could yield valuable insight into how to improve the economics of your online operations. The trick, of course, is to use this tool in a way that would support relevance and connection, rather than herd journalism, which I think could be done.
What do you think? Please comment here.
