I always make sure that we are actively using Bing and Google. There is a tradeoff in your time when you use more tools, but there's also benefit in multiple perspectives. And don't forget that Bing is a very viable search engine that receives 500 million search queries each month. You may find that your business benefits from a relatively small amount of attention paid to Bing because search ranking there is easier (not easy, easier).
Google Trends is great for research and planning, to analyse keyword demand and associated costs. It really does help plan to capture consumer demand. It can be a little tricky to use, as the UX design isn't brilliant, so you'll need to learn how to navigate the website.
I love how Google Trends presents the popularity of a specific query by location. For example, my product may be more popular or more "searched" in a specific state or city. This helps a lot for direct mail campaigns or any sort of in-person marketing efforts like events or pop-ups. You could use the information from Google Trends to decide what locations will be more receptive of your product/industry or you could see where people have little to no interest and build a brand awareness campaign focusing on those areas.
Another great feature within Google Trends is that it shows "Related Queries", which are basically suggestions of better keywords or phrases to incorporate into your content. If you search for data on a keyword you're using that's too broad (your content won't stand out among other web pages) or too narrow (not many potential customers are searching that keyword or phrase), Google Trends will suggest a related keyword or phrase that is more appropriate or trending at the moment. You could go back and incorporate these phrases into your content so that it's more likely to be found on search engines.
Within the Google Trends "Related Topics" section, you can choose whether you want to see topics that are "Top" or "Rising". I like this feature because looking at a "Rising" topic can help you create content that's more likely to be seen - especially if you're a beginner. Most topics that are in the "Top" category can have thousands of web pages that you're competing against and you can feel like your content is drowning. But the topics in the "rising" category can be great for newer sites that haven't developed authority online yet. You can write on one of these topics and be one of the first sites to create content on that topic, which gives you a head start over other sites.
Google Trends "Categories" is also a great feature. If you don't have any content ideas for your website, you can easily find inspiration by selecting a category that's relevant to your industry. The top keywords or topics will come up and you can create content on those topics to increase your number of web visitors. For example, if you work in the fashion industry and you don't have content ideas, you can have Google Trends generate data for the "Beauty & Fitness" or "Shopping" categories to see what's trending. Google will tell you if a specific brand, person, or event is trending and you could write an article based on one of those trends. Since people are searching for that topic, your content will be seen. This is a great way to create timely content even if you're new to an industry or simply haven't kept up with it.
The user-interface isn't as friendly or appealing as Google's - very bland overall.
The way they present their Page Traffic report is a big turn-off. It's basically just a grid of numbers and arrows which is hard to interpret at a high level.
It would be nice to have breadcrumbs available so that I can go backward in a particular search. One I click a topic and then click the related terms two or three times, I find that I'm so far down the rabbit hole that the "Back" button in my browser is a really inconvenient way to find my way back to a certain stage of my search. If there were breadcrumbs I could jump directly back to a particular stage and chase another rabbit from there.
It's easy to get lost searching in here for an extended period of time. I would be nice to be able to print a report of my whole session when I have finished.
It would be nice to have a Top Tends board of job searches or other information related to jobs that are currently popular Google searches.
Very usable overall, quick to find information and conduct analysis for example of how a price of content is performing on Bing search. User interface is a bit clunky at times but easy enough once you get used to it.
Google Trends is very easy to use. you just search for a certain keyword or phrase, and it tells you how often that keyword or phrase is searched, where in the world it is searched, and over the last decade, how often it is per year.
I haven't needed to use any support for Google Trends. However, I've used Google's support in general and it's a hit or miss. Usually, there's a long wait or they don't understand my problem. They are the only ones that can help, so sometimes I feel stuck. They prioritize paying customers for sure.
I think that Bing does a good job of being a competitive product in a space that has very basic and insanely complex products. While Bing isn't pretty, it gets the job done and also gets you the right tools in a simple and straight forward backend UI. The ability to place Bing ads, track SEO and see how your site is performing, all from one backend interface is awesome!
Google Trends is a great place to start in the content curation, content research, blog post writing, and resource page creation process. It is not, however, a place to do serious SEO optimization. Tools like Moz, or Analytics SEO would be a better place to go after you do initial research on Google Trends to dial in your keywords, and optimize content for search engines.
