Recently I have been visiting the Google Trends to get their hot trends data. This is a really neat site because it shows the top 100 searches on Google. The page is updated frequently. For example, I just went to the site, and it had been updated 7 minutes ago.

This isn’t going to replace keyword research, but it is a way to see what keywords are hot right now.

When you get to the page, you’ll see a list of the top 100 searches. Once you click on any of the links, you’ll get a new page where you can see more cool info.

At the top of the page you get the “hotness” of the keyword. For example – Volcanic, On Fire, Spicy, and Medium. Beneath that you’ll see a list of related searches for that keyword. If you find a keyword that you’re interested in, the related keywords will help you to drill deeper into the topic.

To the right of that is a graph of the search volume. Beneath that is a column of news articles, and next to that is a column of blog posts related to that keyword. And at the bottom there is a list of related web sites.

THis data can be a real gold mine for getting ideas of topics that are getting a lot of searches. I like to pick out a few keywords that I find interesting, and track them for a few days to see if they stay in the top 100. If they do, I decide if I want to take the time to find an affiliate program that I can use to make money from this trend.

I can also write a blog post and put up adsense ads to monetize my site.

This doesn’t replace keyword research. With keyword research, you’re looking at what people have searched for in the past. It may be the recent past, but it is based on past searches. With Google Trends, you can see what is being searched for today.

If you have a blog, you can spot a trend, write a post, include an affiliate link or adsense, and potentially get some traffic and cash. Or you can just use the information to get ideas for articles and other content for your site.

This is a completely free tool from Google, and it’s kind of fun to see what’s going on with searches in almost real time. Take a look at it by going to www.google.com/trends/hottrends