• Nielsen daily unique browser data shows all of the Australian news sites increasing traffic over the last year. For example, news.com.au grew from 250,829 average daily unique browsers (UBs) in July 2008 to 346,367 in October 2009, a 38% increase. Not the roughly 50% drop shown here.
• The forums area of Google Trends is rather quiet. There were only three questions or comments posted for the whole of September, none of which received a reply, and nothing since. I can’t see that anyone from Google has responded to anything for months and months — I gave up looking back any further. Others have noted that Google Trends data differs wildly from Google’s own Analytics product — usually complaining that it shows significantly less traffic.

Google Trends is a Google Labs product, i.e. an experiment, I’m starting to think that it’s been abandoned and we’re just seeing a slow degradation due to lack of maintenance.

I am now more interested that ever to see Google’s response. And at the same time I don’t want to see it, because I think it will confirm my theory and confirm my goosehood.

Thanks for writing about this, has set off a whole chain of thinking.

Cheers,

Craig

I did ask to get in touch with someone from Google Trends, but it’s now Thanksgiving weekend in the US and I don’t expect a prompt response.