Trend-Spotting

I've been playing around with one of Google's new tools: Google Trends. It's one of their latest tools. You enter a term and it graphs how popular of a search term it has been for the last two years. You can easily see find the spikes in the graph indicating a jump in search. Correspondingly, you can click on a news article that was published around the time of the spike that might have contributed to the jump in interest.

You can use Google Trends if your patients inquire or comment on a condition or some recent health report. Use this tool to gauge public interest on the topic or simply find out what others are talking about. If there is indeed a surge in interest on a particular topic, then you'll know what topic to tackle on your next health-talk, newsletter, or any other promotional campaign.

On a side note, I changed the layout of the blog yesterday. I prefer the cleaner look that it has now. I actually spent too much time altering it by first "jazzing" it up with new graphics and color changes. I just kept playing around with the ideas of adding different things hoping to find the right combination, creating the right effect. Minutes turned into hours before I realized the best view is a plain one with a minimal of color. I settled on this current design hoping it's easier for the reader's eyes. As always, I welcome any feedback you may have, even your thoughts on my blog layout.