Embeddable Google Trends Gadget Introduced

It’s not easy to accurately describe a graph using words. It’s not enjoyable to read an accurate description, either. So, perhaps in an attempt to save bloggers and their audiences from either being ignorant or dying of boredom, an embeddable Google Trends gadget has been introduced.

Search trends can be interesting for all sorts of reasons. On the Official Google Blog, R.J. Pittman explains that he’s used them to predict "American Idol" outcomes. Or you can try to prove a politician’s importance or a movie’s success.

Whichever route you decide to go, the Google Trends gadget is easy to use. Just substitute your own terms into the supplied code (see the sample below), and you’ll be all set to show off a nice little graph on any site.

There are a couple of minor problems, though. First, you may notice that the graph’s scale is a little iffy. Second, the last "s" has for some reason been cut off "Transformers."

Finally, for the sake of not having changing data make your points look off-base (imagine a Christmas article showing July’s searches for Santa), it seems like screenshots will still be the way to go in a lot of situations.

There are 3 Comments. Add Yours.

Guest
May 7, 2009 at 6:04 pm

Too bad they didn’t explain what codes to use for countries others than the US and, even more important, what could to use instead of “mtd”, if one wants to have 1 year or “max” as a time base.

When you click “edit” on Google Trends Widget’s page and change your parameters, the code for copy-paste to the right stays the same. Quite stupid and very un-google-like
- Federico
  May 10, 2009 at 4:15 pm
  
  I think you didn’t search enough…
  
  If you want to make the graph for 1 year, replace MTD with YTD, and if you want to make for all period, simple replace with ALL
  
  The country codes are: ISO 3166-1 alfa-2, the same as used in internet country codes
pragan
August 19, 2009 at 3:55 pm

Hi,
thanks for the post,

I would like to know if we can hide the “edit” button in that gadget because I am trying to show the gadget on a page based on the main keyword and I don’t want my users to edit it and see data right there.
As its in a iframe, I guess we cannot just use css to hide “edit” alone. any help please?

Also, there are some keywords for which google doesn’t have the data, so in those scenarios i would like to hide the chart completely..is there any way I can get the complete data sheet so that I can compare my keywords against that to show/hide the chart accordingly?

regards