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John Koetsier raised the prospect of Google's Trends tool progressing from its very general utility to something more granular, namely something Google can sell to marketers.

Koetsier's blog post about Google Trends noted how the site's output are "are simply pretty lines on the wall right now infoporn chart cruft." With only comparative instead of actual magnitude data shown, Google Trends is not very useful as is.

However, he thinks a much different version of Google Trends, in a pro edition, could be the next step Google takes with the service:

While the trends are still nice to see, you have to think that there's something bigger here that Google will pull out of its sleeve sooner or later: a paid trends analysis tool.
With a pro version, Koetsier believes Google could charge companies and show them how many people in a given geographic area searched for them, what those searchers were also looking for, and how many searches took place for a competitor.

Even though Google makes nearly all of its revenue from online advertising, maybe the potential cited here could persuade them to branch out, if they haven't decided to do so already.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.