Trends Lab guide

Start with the sample

On the empty Lab screen, press See the sample. It is a Keto Calorie Tracker idea with three terms, one comparison, a year of weekly checks, seasonality, a breakout, related queries and regions. Nothing is fetched, so you can learn the views before you spend a request.

Add terms and check

1. 1

   Add a term

   Type a search term in the library on the left. Adding the same term twice keeps one.

2. 2

   Choose what to check

   Pick the region, the range and an optional Google Trends category.

3. 3

   Press Check now

   The Lab shows how many requests it is and about how long it will take. They run one at a time, so you can keep working. A check above 200 requests asks you to confirm first.

• Google asked us to slow down: checks continue more slowly. If Google stays busy, the Lab tries again the next day and keeps the last good data on screen.
• No connection to Google Trends: check your internet and try again.
• Some requests did not finish: press Check now again. Finished ones are kept.

Compare

Compare draws up to 5 terms as lines of interest over time, with momentum, direction (rising, steady or fading), peak week and breakouts in a table. Terms in one check share a scale, so you can see which is rising fastest. Save a comparison to open it again from the library. Two different checks are never drawn on one scale.

History shows how the same terms changed over repeated checks, as momentum and rank within the set. Levels from different checks are never joined, because each check has its own scale.

Seasonality

Seasonality shows which weeks of the year a term peaks in, across years, plus a monthly index, the peak and low month, and whether the term is seasonal at all. It needs a 5 year check. With less data the Lab says how many years it has and offers to check over 5 years.

Rising

Rising lists the queries people search next to a term: the top ones and the rising ones. Open a rising query to see what sits under it. Each look-up is one request, and a query already held today is read from your computer for free. Breakouts come from two sources that are never merged: queries Google marks Breakout, and the Lab's own detector, which flags a week that spiked above the recent median.

Regions and Grid

• Regions: where one term is strongest, by country, state or region, or city. A region with too little volume often returns nothing, so a missing region is not zero.
• Grid: your tracked terms against up to 8 regions. Each cell is its own single-term check, so compare shape and momentum, never height between regions.

Weekly alerts and watching

Turn on the weekly re-check for a term. While Desktop is open, a watched term is checked again once a week and its history grows. The What changed panel lists a new breakout, a direction change that held for two checks, or a term that became seasonal. Nothing runs when the app is closed.

Use it with your AI

Pin a comparison to the evidence board, labelled relative interest, or attach it to the chat. Every Lab action is also an MCP tool, so Claude, Codex or Cursor can drive it. See the Trends Lab group in the tools reference.

• "Which of these terms is rising fastest?"
• "When should I launch for the peak?"
• "Which rising queries are worth a page?"

What the numbers are