Released at WSJDLive, October 20, 2015, Google launched an exceptional tool called Shopping Insights in beta phase. The tool is meant to show retailers and other businesses statistical data about what and how much customers are searching for a specific product in their cities. Google Shopping Insights is helpful in showing the top searched and trending products on the city level for a particular month.

So What Exactly is Google Shopping Insights

Google Shopping Insights, is a service aimed to help retailers understand the way consumers shop for different products via Google. Introduced 2 years back, the feature was first made available in the beta version with next significant update in November 2016. It gives you an edge over exploring details about specific products trending on Google.com, their trend track record, comparative analysis based on regions, and much more.

Using the feature, retailers can get to know how customers shop for products using their devices and PCs on Google. At present, the majority of people search online, still, most of them buy products from physical stores. What makes Shopping Insights interesting for retailers is the way it shows them consumers’ preferences and mindshare for different products on the basis of the city, state, or country.

Google Shopping Insights Vs AdWords Keyword Planner

Well, of course, there is already the AdWords Keyword Planner which helps you find current search trends and new keywords, but Shopping Insights goes one step further from finding out the latest trends only…it offers the capability to understand consumer’s shopping trends in detail on a city-by-city level with a lot more useful features. Also, it is more of a decision-making tool to adjust your strategy than a concrete AdWords helper.

Main features of Shopping Insights

As already said above, Google Shopping Insights is meant to serve retailers with proper information on the trending and popular products searched and bought by customers using Google as the medium.

There are three main categories:

Featured Stories

It shows the featured stories about different niche and products, services, etc on the basis of their popularity and search.

Top Products

This category deals with the top 10 searched products on Google. The tool ranks products which have the highest query volume for a specific month. The top products are decided as the top 10 products with the highest search volumes for a certain month. This list is then displayed in descending order.

Trending Products



This is where comparative analysis is offered. Trending products are calculated with a comparison of search volumes for the particular month against the previous month. This category shows 5 top and the least trending products in a somewhat graphical way to show their performance over the month in consideration. It also shows the estimated growth or downfall in the popularity or demand of that specific product over that month and is sorted according to the highest volume of change.

Other than these visible features, the tool has much more interesting stuff hiding under its hood. Here’s the roundup:

Heat Map

This indicates a product’s popularity in a particular time period throughout different regions. The darker shades on the map mean higher consumer interest in that item(s). One thing to note here is that the data displayed on these heat maps is relative to a specific city with the highest level of interest (max 100). When you zoom, you will be able to view info on a micro level for all the listed cities, states, and regions. You can zoom until each city becomes a visible circle. When you hover on a circle, it will display you the interest level in that city as compared to the city with the highest interest.

Data Filter

If you’d like, you can even filter the data on the basis of a device. This will let you compare and analyze the interest ratio on smartphones against laptops or desktops. What’s more, you can additionally compare multiple products. The entire data is normalized in comparison to the highest point for the specific chart in a review.

Time Series Graph

You can also view the time series graph to get an idea of consumer’s interest in an item over particular time periods. This data is shown in form of percentage with the highest point on the graph as 100 (as already said).