Google Trends expands beyond search with list of daily viral YouTube videos

Google today updated Google Trends with a new section for YouTube videos. The company will now show you the most-watched content on its video portal in the last 24 hours.

Google Trends first started tracking YouTube back in March 2013. Yet today’s addition isn’t simply adding up all the queries typed on the site: Google Trends is expanding outside of search and is now looking at other data, in this case view counts on YouTube videos.

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Up to 200 videos will be listed on this Trending on YouTube page every day. We say “up to” because so far today, Google Trends is only showing 27 YouTube clips. Yesterday there were 52, so there’s clearly a minimum threshold that has to be met before a video is added.

There is one notable limitation. Google says, “This feature is available in the U.S., but we plan to expand soon.” This isn’t entirely correct; I’m writing this from Canada, and here’s what I see:

It’s the data that is limited to the U.S. Regardless of what country you access Trending on YouTube from, you’ll be able to use it, but you’ll only get back results from what Americans are viewing on the site.

This applies to the mobile site as well, which has been updated to support the new feature:

In short, Google has started keeping track of which videos went viral on which day. While the data is limited to 24 hours for now, it’s not hard to see the company eventually will show you what was popular across a week, a month, or even a year.

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Eventually, once Google Trends starts supporting all the countries where YouTube is available, this will be a great source for keeping tabs on which videos were popular when. While the What’s Trending section on YouTube is more personalized, the new Trending on YouTube page offers much broader insights.