Google Trends is appropriate in so many scenarios, but I definitely suggest it for content ideas and inspiration. Many people utilize it after already writing their content to add in popular phrases or words, but that is not enough. The platform should be used prior and during the content creation process so that you can use the data to see what your audience/customers are interested in at the moment and create the content based on their interests. It can help, but I find it much less appropriate to use it after your article, eBook, etc. is already written. Maximize on this useful tool by ensuring the topic you're writing about is relevant in the first place before simply adding in popular keywords. An article that's written based on what's trending will be far more successful than an article that solely has popular phrases added to it.
Rankinity is well-suited for agencies that provide SEO services for some clients. It's a great stepping stone tool while an agency scales it's services and builds a book of SEO clients since you pay per keyword check. The frequency of checks can be set for each client (project) so if services are performed monthly, you can set checks to happen at the beginning of the month
Google Trends shows me geographic locations where a particular topic may be useful for advertising.
Google Trends allows me to drill down into those locations to metro and city levels where I can focus on exactly what local business clients need to know.
Google Trends allows me to identify and qualify search terms that my client's need to optimize their websites and social media content for.
Google Trends shows me what people are talking about in a specific location over a specific period of time. This is a great way to know what I should be posting on social media.
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.
We've seen one major platform update (user interface overhaul). This has made the system much easier to use. There are some features that could still be improved like historical rankings but overall the system is good and aligns with the expectation for what you pay for it. Not a whole lot to complain about on the usability side of things
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.
No chat support, only email support. Whenever I've used their support system, I have received responses in 1-2 business days and the solution addressed my needs/concerns. I've really only had a couple of instances where I've needed to reach out to their support team since the system is pretty straight forward and easy to use.
Overall I think that Ahrefs is a better product when it comes to really drilling down and getting all the data that you need in order to understand a given behavior or problem. Ahrefs is much more powerful in its feature set but does not have the same level of overall data/visual data representation that Google Trends does.
Rankinity is simpler solution that's different than the all-in-one type solutions we've also used. A lot of it comes down to process and how service offerings are built for clients. We use Rankinity for clients where we're tracking a lot of keywords in a lot of different geographic areas because it's a more cost-effective solutions. But for larger clients, we typically rely on all-in-one solutions that offer more tools for SEO.
