I found out about Google Trends some time ago and I briefly played with its features, but I had forgotten about it until today when I read about it again in my current issue of Maximum PC. In reading it, I finally thought of a good reason for me to use it.

If you don't already know, Google Trends allows you to see near real-time search term popularity and compare search terms.

If you do not already know, I am a DotNetNuke Portal supporter. I use it for nearly all web projects that I have. I won't go into why right now. That could be for another posting. However, I did want to try and judge the popularity of the DotNetNuke project compared to other popular portals. I used Google Trends to test this out. See the results below.

Portal Search Popularity in the United States

Portal Search Popularity in the World

I expected the PHP portal results to be at least somewhat high. This was not surprising at all. However, I am no longer as savvy on the most popular PHP portals right now. Performing a search, I found quote a few out there. I at first also included Xoops, but its results were quote low. You may have better luck if you know of other PHP portals that are more popular.

The trend results were very interesting and somewhat concerning for me. I cannot believe how much more SharePoint and Websphere are searched for on Google. Especially when you consider the different in costs! One could speculate on this "trend" in many different ways, but I will allow you to draw your own conclusion.