Google Trends reporting in Google Data Studio: A free template and tutorial

Google Trends is a great tool for understanding what your audience is interested in or curious about. Content marketers can use Google Trends to search for keywords. Performance marketers can use it for campaign planning. And social media marketers can use the tool to stay ahead of trends.

However, more often than not, you may find keeping track of hot topics and search terms manually in Google Trends very tedious and time-consuming.

That’s why I’ll share with you an automated Google Trends dashboard for Google Data Studio that will help you easily:

• Monitor the performance and evolution of relevant topics
• Identify potential business opportunities
• Share the results with your teammates or clients

However, if you’re looking for a Google Trends connector for Data Studio and already know what you’re doing, feel free to start your free 14-day trial of Supermetrics.

Without further ado, let’s get right into it.

Google Trends dashboard for Google Data Studio

Before exploring the dashboard, it’s worth noting that Google Trends won’t tell you the exact search volume. Rather, the results are presented on a scale from 0 to 100, where 100 is the location with the most searches and 0 means there was not enough data for the term, or the search interest here is too small compared to the top locations.

The Google Trends dashboard consists of two pages:

• Country breakdown: shows search terms and search interests by country
• Time trends: shows search terms and search interests over certain time periods.

Let’s take a closer look at each page to see what’s in it for you and how you can analyze your Google Trends data.

Country breakdown

The ‘country breakdown’ page lets you monitor the interest of a search term in different locations.

‘Interest by region’ shows you the location where your search term is the most popular during a certain period.

You can choose to filter your search term by different regions or subregions. This decision will affect the data in your report. In this example, I chose ‘worldwide’ as my location and broke down my search term by region. However, if I want to check Netflix’s popularity in certain cities in the US, I’ll have to choose ‘the US’ as my location when configuring the report — which I’ll show you how to do later.

The map is a good place to monitor your brand awareness across key markets. Let’s say you’re Netflix’s Brand Manager. You can add Netflix to the map and see where Netflix is popular. For example, you can quickly see people show strong interest in Netflix in Canada, the US, Brazil, France, India, Australia, etc.

You can also filter the map by different periods to see how your brand’s popularity has evolved.

Another useful thing you could do on this page is benchmark competitors. You can easily see how your competitors are doing in different locations.

For example, in the table below, I compare the popularity of five different streaming services — Netflix, Disney+, Apple TV+, HBO Max, and Hulu.

If your popularity in the key market is less than your competitor’s, you can consider running more brand awareness campaigns or creating more content for the target market.

On the other hand, if you notice a location where your competitors are not quite popular, you may want to take this advantage to enter the market and become the leader.

Time trends

The time trends report lets you monitor and compare the popularity of search terms and topics over time. 

For many marketers, especially ecommerce, seasonality is a great opportunity to drive more sales. That’s why it’s important to plan and make sure you make the most of the holidays.

Imagine you’re selling eco-friendly products, and you’re looking to boost sales at the end of the year — when the festive season starts.

You can add the search term ‘gift ideas’ to your report — like the example below — to see the best time to start your campaign. Here, you can see there’s a spike at the beginning of October. You may want to start your campaigns to capture this early traffic.

Additionally, you can monitor the popularity of certain topics or search terms by hour. For example, in the table below, I’m comparing the interest around popular video games — including Minecraft, Fortnite, GTA 5, and Call of Duty.

The ‘interest by hour’ report comes in very handy when you monitor a trend in real-time. For example, if you just released a new product or feature, you can add your brand keyword here to see the audience’s interest in the news.  

How to get started with the Google Trends overview template

To get started, open the template. In the top left corner, click ‘Use template’.

Now, you need to add Google Trends as a data source to your template so it’ll automatically pull all the necessary data.

To do that, click the drop-down menu, then select ‘Create new data source’.

Google will direct you to the connector gallery. Here, search for a connector called ‘Google Trends by Supermetrics’.

Next, authorize your Google account.

Connecting the data source will automatically start your 14-day free trial of Supermetrics for Data Studio.

You need to choose the query type (or report type) for the template. You’ll find seven different query types:

• Interest over time: shows you the popularity of selected topics and search terms over a determined period. You can add up to 50 keywords to the report.
• Interest by hour: shows you the real-time popularity of certain topics or search terms. Similar to the ‘interest over time’ report, you can add up to 50 keywords here.
• Interest by region: lets you monitor the interests for up to five topics and terms in selected locations. You can track at a country level or drill down to a city level.
• Interest by query: shows the relevant search queries based on your selected search terms. 
• Related topics: shows the related topics to your chosen search terms.
• Topic suggestions: suggests the relevant topics based on your selected search terms.

You’ll need to connect two reports for this template: interest by region and interest by hour.

Since the template is customizable, you can easily add more reports and get relevant data for your needs.

Now, I’ll show you how to configure the report types.

Let’s start with the ‘interest by region’ report. So on the drop-down menu, select ‘interest by region’, then click ‘Next’.

Completing your query by filling in these fields:

• Search term
• Select country
• Search type
• Category

Once you’re done, click ‘Connect’, then ‘Add to report’.

Then continue adding the second report. Click on the drop-down menu and select ‘Create new data source’.

Similarly, you need to search for the ‘Google Trends by Supermetrics’ connector and configure the next report, for example, the ‘interest by hour’ report. Completing the query by filling in these fields:

• Search term
• Select country
• Search type
• Category
• Time zone

Once you’re happy with the query, click ‘Connect’ and ‘Add to report’. 

After that, click on ‘Copy report’.

And that’s it. Your Google Trends report is ready to use. If you’d like to share it with your clients or teammates, simply click ‘Share’ and enter their email addresses.

Over to you

Remember that this is only the beginning. Since you now have access to ‘Supermetrics for Data Studio’, feel free to play around and build insightful reports. 

For example, you can combine your paid ad data with Google Trends data to identify keywords that work best. Or you can also bring in Google Search Console data to help plan your content.

If you’d like to feature your use case or report on the Supermetrics blog, let me know on LinkedIn.

Happy reporting!