Google Trends for Marketing Analytics

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Required Packages

# Run once to install
install.packages(c("gtrendsR", "tidyverse", "ggplot2", "scales",
                   "lubridate", "knitr", "kableExtra"))

library(gtrendsR)     # Pull data from Google Trends
library(tidyverse)    # Data manipulation and plotting
library(ggplot2)      # Visualization
library(scales)       # Axis formatting
library(lubridate)    # Date handling
library(knitr)        # Tables
library(kableExtra)   # Enhanced table formatting

Understanding the gtrends() Function

“now 1-H” → Past hour “now 4-H” → Past 4 hours “today 1-m” → Past 30 days “today 3-m” → Past 90 days “today 12-m” → Past 12 months “today+5-y” → Past 5 years “all” → Since 2004

Tutorial 1: Single Keyword — Brand Search Interest

Query Google Trends

starbucks_trend <- gtrends(
  keyword = "Starbucks",
  geo = "US",
  time = "today+5-y"
)

# Extract interest over time
iot <- starbucks_trend$interest_over_time

ggplot(iot, aes(x = date, y = hits)) +
  geom_line(color = "#00704A", linewidth = 1) +
  geom_smooth(method = "loess", se = TRUE, color = "#1E3932",
              fill = "#D4E9E2", alpha = 0.3) +
  scale_x_datetime(date_labels = "%b %Y", date_breaks = "2 months") +
  labs(
    title    = "Google Search Interest: Starbucks",
    subtitle = "United States | Past 5 years | Web Search",
    x        = NULL,
    y        = "Relative Interest (0–100)",
    caption  = "Source: Google Trends via gtrendsR | github.com/utjimmyx"
  ) +
  theme_minimal(base_size = 12) +
  theme(
    plot.title    = element_text(face = "bold", size = 14),
    plot.subtitle = element_text(color = "gray50"),
    axis.text.x   = element_text(angle = 30, hjust = 1)
  )

References

Google Trends. (2024). Google Trends Tutorials [YouTube series]. Google Search Central. https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/09/google-trends-tutorials Massicotte, P., & Eddelbuettel, D. (2023). gtrendsR: Perform and Display Google Trends Queries [R package]. https://cran.r-project.org/package=gtrendsR Chan, M. (2019). Vignette: Google Trends with the gtrendsR package. https://martinctc.github.io/blog/vignette-google-trends-with-gtrendsr/