We should really stop looking to Google Trends to infer the popularity of a subject (something I've been guilty of as well!). The number of searches can't be co

We should really stop looking to Google Trends to infer the popularity of a subject (something I've been guilty of as well!). The number of searches can't be completely correlated to the popularity, because as word-of-mouth and general knowledge of a service builds, the more likely people are to go directly to that service and not perform a Google search. Additionally, Google trend numbers are relative to all historic search activity. As Google's market share changes over time, that's likely to impact what Trends shows as well, skewing the correlation with subject popularity even further.