One way to maximize your Web site’s visibility on Google is to understand what words people use to search for information. That’s just what the Google Trends tool does. It shows you the most popular searches on Google in any given hour, plus a list of related news articles and blog posts that support the rise and fall of the traffic surges. If any of them affects your business, you’ll see it first here and will be able to react faster.

You can click on any of the keywords to learn more, including the hourly volume of searches, whether popularity is going up or down and (in some cases) where, geographically, the majority of the searches are coming from. You can also enter your own keywords to see where that search stands over a selected period of time. To access the tool, simply go to www.google.com/trends.