Google trends was one of the more interesting tools that helped estimate the popularity of a search term. However, users were often left frustrated by the lack of any numbers whatsoever on the Y axis. That meant that one had to visually guess the relative popularity of a search phrase vis-à-vis another one. Not too usefule for a search engine optimization consultant!

Now, at last, Google has introduced a Y axis value. While the axis still doesn’t give us the absolute number of searches for a particular term, it scales the first term entered so that its average search traffic in the chosen time period is 1 and then gives us the relative popularity of the subsequent search terms.

I entered mobile phones and cell phones as my 2 search terms and set the period to last 12 months and Geo to All regions, Google trends gave me a figure of 1 for mobile phones and 1.20 for cell phones. This means that for every 5 searches of mobile phones over the last 12 months, there were 6 searches for cell phones. Interesting. Now, if I have a site ranking at the top of Google for one of these terms I can easily and accurately estimate the number of hits I can get for the other term as well. Much better than using just third party tools for keyword analysis, isn’t it?

I wonder how serious Yahoo was when they re-initiated partnership talks with Microsoft… cause just hours after the official calling off of talks with Microsoft, Yahoo announced a partnership with Google to host and display Google’s Adwords ads on its search engine result pages.

Is that good? Well, for Yahoo it is. Cause Google Adwords is much more popular than Yahoo’s search marketing program. Google Adwords Ads are also more expensive per click than Yahoo ads were. This means that Yahoo may get more revenue per click than their own program was able to generate.

For advertisers, the positive is that Adwords will now be able to give them a much wider audience. On the flip side, the deal makes Google a virtual monopoly in the paid search advertising (popularly known as pay per click) arena.

Again… I think this hasn’t ended and there is more to come! Stay tuned…