All this forecasting power isn't available just to Google, either. On both the Google Insights for Search page and the Google Trends page, any query result can be downloaded as a CSV (comma separated value) format file, suitable for import into any spreadsheet or database application. If you are in the trend business, this is great news as you can immediately start using Google result datasets against other, more traditional reports.

An important point that is made at the beginning of the report is that Google Trends pulls from all Google properties using localized, anonymous search usage data. As Google Blogoscoped points out,

Whenever you search in Google, send a Gmail email, call Google's 411 service, enter something in Chrome's URL bar and so on, you're adding to the data which Google can mine for other purposes than the ones you might have been immediately thinking of.

Thinking about this can initially be a bit terrifying on a personal level, but keep in mind that all that information is boiled down into aggregate trend data, and according to Google's privacy policy, which prevents examination of individual contributions to the data except in cases of a lawsuit, and even then specifics are only kept for a short period of time.

The fact that Google is sitting on an information treasure trove is one thing. Knowing how to take advantage of that fact is another. Google goes a step further and offers their aggregate statistics for others to use, too. For example, they have a special page that just tracks flu trends across the US to help people make informed decisions on if they should get a flu shot, based on what region of the country they live in.

Google Trends for Websites is yet another traffic tracker for sites. It's in a field already dominated by Compete, Quantcast (for US traffic), and Alexa. So what could it possibly offer to users that we don't already have? This is Google we're talking about and Google has a significant amount of data about a ton of websites. For example, in our recent poll of Instant Messengers that ReadWriteWeb readers use here's how the websites IM clients Digsby, Trillian, Pidgin, Miranda IM, and Adium stack up against one another using Google Trends for Websites:

You'll receive a graph of traffic stats along with stats on the region of most visitors, related sites that visitors visited, and even other search terms if there are any. In contrast, Google Trends for keywords will show related searches, how popular the keyword is, peak time, news articles and blog posts mentioning the keyword.

The Little Guys Are Left In The Dust Again

If your blog or website doesn't receive a lot of traffic, you're better off sticking to trackers such as the Google Analytics service. Google Trends for Websites won't have any data for such sites, which is a shame considering the smaller bloggers may be the biggest users of the product. Personally, I don't see the use for Google Trends for Websites compared to other tools that are out there that offer the same information and more. Blogs already receive the information that Google is giving via their own statistics software with a lot more flexibility and options to choose from. In the end, Google Trends for Websites seems like a bit of a dud and the name should be changed to Google Trends for Popular Websites.

Here is an example of Lexicon:

...and a comparable trend map from Google Trends:

In announcing this new service, Facebook was careful to emphasize that no privacy violations have occured:

"We have a cluster of computers that count the number of occurrences of every term (for example, "juno") across profile, group and event Walls every day. The system strips out all personally identifiable information so that there is no way to track a mention back to a specific person. No human at Facebook ever reads these Wall posts, and Lexicon does not look at personal messages, invitations, or any other private user-to-user communications."

Overall, it's good to see Facebook mining some of the vast data that they have - but not stepping on sensitive privacy toes while doing so.