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If you haven't discovered Google Trends yet, you're missing out on some of the Web's most interesting data and information. At any point you can see what searches are trending on Google and can use this data to compare the popularity of trends over time with nifty graphs. It's fun to play around with - but wouldn't it be nice if someone spoon-fed you the popular trends, explaining them each week in a short-form video podcast format? Luckily this is precisely what Google will now be doing with a new weekly video series called Google Beat.

Google released a research paper yesterday that takes an in-depth look at Google Trends and Google Insights for Search and compares its trend results against more mainstream industry reports based on actual sales data in several different categories like auto sales and home sales. Several statistical models are explained and compared, and relative accuracy is determined for each model.

Recently, Google Trends added an update to the service and extended its functionality to websites with Google Trends for Websites. Google Trends gives recommendations on popular trends occurring on the web today. Now anyone with a website can find out popular trends about their website, except for the small guys.