A search trend shows how searches for a keyword have moved month by month over the past year. RankDots shows it in two ways: the Trend line, a small chart of the year, and the 3-month search trend, the recent change as a percentage. Search volume tells you how big the demand is; the trend tells you which way it is moving.
Where you’ll see it
- Keywords and Pages screens: the Trend column, one line per row.
- Keywords screen: 3-month search trend. Turn it on in Manage columns; you can also filter by it.
- A page’s details: a chart of the page’s monthly searches next to Volume, with a percentage - the average 3-month change of the page’s keywords.
How to read it
A rising line means demand is growing. A falling line means it is shrinking. A flat line means steady demand.
Repeating peaks and dips mean a seasonal keyword. Its search volume is a yearly average, so its busiest month can be far above that figure and its quiet months far below.
The 3-month figure is recent momentum. A big jump can be short-lived, and a drop can simply be a seasonal keyword entering its quiet months. Check the line before acting on the number.
When a trend should change your plan
- Move a page up when its keywords are rising, or a seasonal peak is coming. New pages need time to be indexed and to climb, so publish well before the peak.
- Move a page down when its line has fallen steadily all year - unless the topic matters to your business anyway.
- Don’t let the trend decide alone. Weigh it with potential traffic and Weak spots: a rising keyword you cannot rank for is still out of reach.
How we calculate it
Both figures come from Google Keyword Planner, the same source as search volume. The Trend line shows a keyword’s monthly searches over the 12 months up to the day your project was created. The 3-month search trend is the percentage change in search volume on that day compared with three months earlier.
For a page, the line is the sum of its keywords’ monthly searches. The percentage in a page’s details is the average of its keywords’ 3-month changes. Because one is a sum and the other an average, the two can point in different directions.
Like search volume, the trend is an estimate of demand, not a count of real searches. It is fixed when your project is created and is not refreshed afterwards.
What it doesn’t tell you
- What will happen next. A trend describes the past year; it is not a forecast.
- How demand has moved since you created the project. Both figures stop at that day.
- Why demand moved. News, a season, or a product launch all look the same on the line.
- Whether you can rank. Weak spots and keyword difficulty answer that.
What next
- What is search volume?
- How to choose which topic to work on first [link is coming]