Caught this announcement on the Google Checkout Blog yesterday and it also appeared on Search Engine Land today. It looks as though Google has added another Trends tool to their arsenal that caters to eCommerce sellers, shoppers and even eTail professionals and search engine marketers.

The new eCommerce trends tool is called Google Checkout Trends. The tool is similar to Google Web Search Trends, except that the Checkout Trends tool only aggregates useful sales data from Google Checkout merchants and charts the data on an easy to use, easy to read interface for the user to see. Basically, it shows users important trend data about who is buying and selling what from Checkout.

Google Checkout Trends aggregates the sales data of Google Checkout merchants and charts it in a matter of seconds. (Of course, all the data is anonymized first.) So if you’re interested in how sales of Batman or Spider Man paraphernalia compare, or are wondering just how popular Ugg boots are these days, visit Checkout Trends for a glimpse into online shopping.

Here’s a screenshot using the example… shoes, boots, heels, slippers

Click the thumbnail to see a larger version of this screenshot.

To use Google Checkout Trends simply type a keyword or phrase into the search bar or compare multiple words by separating phrases with a comma. The example above illustrates how the terms shoes, boots, heels and slippers were entered into the search field and compared within the results below. Other common examples include ipod compared to zune, nike compared to reebok, dress compared to skirt and any other comparative data you can dream up.

To interpret the results simply drag your mouse over the lines in the chart and view the colored phrases in the top right of the chart. You will see the numbers next to each phrase will change for all the compared terms. The example shows that in middle December boots were at an all time high, showing 100, while shoes were very low, showing 1.90, but not higher than slippers at .14 or heels at .08. Interesting stuff, but doesn’t quite seem right that the shoes was lower than boots from December to January, the other two make sense. Maybe there are lots more boots sold due to it being winter in so many places? Lets go check June for the same query. Ah, just what i thought. If you scroll to the left back to June, you’ll see that indeed shoes is higher than boots as people tend to buy less boots in summer and more shoes. Makes sense.

Keep in mind that the data and results are from Google Checkout merchants only and do not represent the entire shopping search scope, however as Google eCommerce services continue to grow in popularity and among users we will see more useful, accurate data from the various Google Trend tools. It would be interesting to compare the main Web Search Trends to the Checkout Trends for the same query. I think I might try that out, one sec…

Ok back, here’s the data from Google Web Trends on the same query…

Interesting to compare the two. On Web trends shoes has out performed the rest for the past three years, but if you look at the end of 2007 (around November to December, you’ll see boots gets very close to shoes on the trend data chart. So the data looks pretty close, just not as refined, like Checkout Trends is. It’s great to be able to gain access to data like this strictly related to buying and selling products. I applaud Google, thanks guys I can see some great potential for this new Checkout Trends data.

Other Google Trend tools include the main Google Web Trends, Google Hot Trends, Google Reader Trends and Google News Trends.