OPEN

Google Trends has for some been giving us a glimpse of trends around what people are looking for on the world’s favourite search engine., now it is letting you do the same for website traffic or “insights into the traffic and geographic visitation patterns”, as the Google explanation of how it works would have it.

All good fun, but I wonder if it has any more accuracy than the notoriously erratic Alexa?

The Goog’s account of where it gets the numbers from is plausible but vague:

Trends for Websites combines information from a variety of sources, such as aggregated Google search data, aggregated opt-in anonymous Google Analytics data, opt-in consumer panel data, and other third-party market research. The data is aggregated over millions of users, powered by computer algorithms, and doesn’t contain personally identifiable information. Additionally, Google Trends for Websites only shows results for sites that receive a significant amount of traffic, and enforces minimum thresholds for inclusion in the tool.

Anyway, let’s have a look at some graphs…

Typepad.com vs. WordPress.com, showing the latter blog platform’s steady success… (BTW this blog will be migrating to avouWordpress soon).

And in the case of the home pages for the top three online newspapers in the UK, Google Trends thinks the Guardian is still in the lead:

And it’s no wonder they all like to have a pop at the BBC…