No I am not talking about the most recent fashions trends. Instead I am referring to the much more interesting Google trends. What better way to keep up with what people are Googling than with the Google Hot Trends gadget on your iGoogle page.

I find news feeds a little untrustworthy sometimes. I don’t want some editor deciding what news I should be paying attention to. So instead I largely look at the Google Hot Trends gadget to see what is going on in the world. This has proven consistently to be a valuable source of information. From what I can tell people seem to search for info on things faster than the news can cover it. So if any real news happens the trends will tell me to search for it.

The Google Hot Trends gadget uses perhaps the most easily understandable rating system available: Hotness. Depending on how much the popularity of a search has increase it is put on a rating scale of “mild” to Volcanic. However this is completely dependent on the spike in traffic. The number one search can be mild at one point and volcanic at another.

To be honest, not all the top searches are completely legit. Sometimes on a slow news day weird things will happen. Every once in a while meaningless things will appear as a top search like “Meg Griffin” or the occasional dirty video reference. Perhaps on the funniest of occasions a large group of people will work together to game the system and get a funny message to appear as a “hot” search. However. it is all good fun and just adds to the usefullness of the gadget.