How To Use Google Trends For Affiliate Marketing 2021

Most affiliate marketers pick a niche and grind for months before they see any real traction. Google Trends lets you flip that process. Instead of guessing what people want, you let the data tell you what is already on fire right now, then go find an affiliate program that pays you to talk about it.

In this post you will learn three specific methods Alston walks through in the video above for using Google Trends in your affiliate marketing business, plus the exact step for finding affiliate programs tied to trending topics, and a repeatable process you can run today. By the end you will know how to turn a trending search term into a commissioned content piece inside an afternoon.

What You’ll Walk Out With

How to use the Google Trends search bar to validate a niche before you create a single piece of content
How to read the Google Trends homepage to find what is trending right now and match it to an affiliate offer
How the Explore page surfaces year-round category trends you can build evergreen content around
How to use real-time and daily trending searches to publish fast content that catches a wave
How Year in Search shows you last year’s breakout topics that are still climbing in interest
The three affiliate networks to start with: Amazon Associates, ClickBank, and ShareASale
Which content format to pair with each type of trend, and how to find your specific online income path at finder.platformproof.com

Way 1: Use the Search Bar to Validate a Niche

The simplest entry point is trends.google.com. You open the site, type a keyword into the search bar, and Google immediately shows you a line graph of how interest in that topic has moved over the past 12 months. You can also zoom out to five years to see whether the trend is growing, shrinking, or seasonal before you invest any time in creating content.

In the video, Alston types in beard oil as his working example. The chart shows that beard oil had a period of declining interest but was starting to turn upward again. That alone is useful data: if a topic is trending down sharply with no sign of recovery, you skip it. If it is flat or curving back up, you have a signal worth acting on.

Below the main chart, Google Trends shows a breakdown by geography. If most of the search volume is concentrated in a handful of states or countries, you know exactly where your audience lives. That affects which affiliate programs make sense to pitch and which regional products you feature in your content.

Scroll further down and you hit two useful sections: Related Queries and Related Topics. Related Queries shows what people type right before or right after they search your main keyword. For beard oil, that might include “best beard oil for dry skin” or “beard oil for growth.” Those specific questions are the ones your content should answer because those are the exact words people type right before they pull out a credit card.

You can also add a second keyword to the comparison field. Alston drops in men’s health alongside beard oil. The side-by-side chart shows beard oil dominating men’s health in search interest, which confirms that the narrow niche outperforms the broad category for content purposes. Narrow wins in affiliate marketing because a reader searching for beard oil is two steps closer to buying something than a reader searching for men’s health in general.

Once you have a validated keyword, the next move is to copy one of the related queries and paste it into Google with the words affiliate program added to the end. Alston does exactly this with the top result from the beard oil related queries and immediately finds a brand with an active affiliate program. That confirmation is your green light to build content in the niche.

Way 2: Read the Google Trends Homepage for What Is Hot Right Now

The Google Trends homepage is a snapshot of what people in the United States, or any country you select, are searching for today. You do not need to type anything. The trending data is sitting right there waiting for you every time you load the page.

When Alston recorded the video, the Super Bowl was the next day and the homepage was leading with Super Bowl content. CES 2021, the consumer electronics trade show, was also featured prominently. He clicked into the CES entry and found a full breakdown of what was generating buzz: gaming, music, artificial intelligence, design, sourcing and packaging, LG Electronics, Microsoft, and TikTok creator tools were all highlighted in the coverage.

That one click produced at least a dozen video or blog ideas. A tech YouTube channel could publish a video titled “10 Things Coming Out of CES 2021” and fill the description with Amazon affiliate links to the featured products: LG electronics, gaming headsets, AI-powered home devices. Any product shown at CES that is sold on Amazon becomes fair game for an affiliate creator that same day.

The homepage also has a Show More button that reveals less obvious trending topics: political coverage, reality TV (The Bachelor was trending in Alston’s example), and a rotating mix of sports, entertainment, and current events. Each trending item is a fresh content angle. If The Bachelor is trending, you can build a piece on “Best Date Night Subscription Boxes” and include affiliate links to meal kits, wine clubs, or experience-based gifts that couples are buying.

The productive habit here is checking the homepage at the start of your content planning session each week. Not to chase every trend, but to spot the two or three that overlap with topics you already operate in or have the standing to speak about with some authority. Chasing trends you know nothing about produces content that readers can tell is hollow, and hollow content does not convert.

Way 3: The Explore Page and Real-Time Searches

The Explore page lives in the left-hand menu on Google Trends. It shows you the biggest search trends across all categories over whatever time window you choose. Set it to the past 12 months and you see the macro story of the year. In Alston’s 2021 video, that meant election results, coronavirus, stimulus checks, and sports events dominating the list.

You can narrow the Explore page to a specific content platform. Switch the filter from Web Search to YouTube Search and you see what people are specifically hunting for on YouTube. Alston’s example pulled up TikTok mashups and a range of entertainment content. If you are building a YouTube channel, this filter is especially useful because it tells you which topics have a proven audience on the exact platform you are working on, not just on Google generally.

Alston specifically calls out three YouTube channels that were generating thousands of views per day in early 2021 by covering stimulus check news: Tyler Pratt, Meet Kevin, and Clear Value Tax. All three built large audiences fast by publishing quick, relevant videos on a trending government topic. Some of those channels never even showed the creator’s face. They showed a screen, read the relevant news, and let AdSense or affiliate revenue roll in. That is a real and documented business model built on reading the Explore page and publishing before the topic cools.

Below the standard Explore view, the Trending Searches section splits into two tabs: Daily Searches and Real-Time Searches. These are two different tools with two different use cases, and understanding the difference matters for how fast you need to move.

Daily Searches show you what was searched most in the past 24 to 48 hours. When Alston demonstrated this tab, the list included Britney Spears, Jennifer Lawrence, video games (specifically GoldenEye 007), Kevin Durant, and Jose Canseco. Each one is a potential hook. A gaming channel could drop a “5 Games Like GoldenEye 007 That Still Hold Up” video and capture searches around a name people are already typing that week. Kevin Durant showing up alongside the Brooklyn Nets points directly to sports apparel affiliate opportunities on Amazon or Fanatics.

Real-Time Searches show what is being searched at that exact moment. Alston’s live example showed soccer at the top, Flip or Flop (a home renovation show), buffalo wings tied to the upcoming Super Bowl, and a range of news events. If you already make content in any of these categories, real-time searches give you same-day publishing opportunities. A home renovation channel could have published something tied to Flip or Flop that same afternoon and captured a meaningful spike in search traffic.

The real-time method works best for creators who can produce and publish within hours, not days. A YouTube live stream, a quick TikTok, or a short 600-word blog post is often enough to catch the wave. You do not need a polished hour-long production to earn from a real-time trending topic. Speed matters more than polish in this lane.

Year in Search: Mining Last Year’s Breakouts

The Year in Search section, accessible from the main Trends menu, shows you everything that broke out in the previous calendar year. Alston’s 2021 example listed coronavirus, election results, stimulus checks, unemployment, how to cut men’s hair at home, how to make whipped coffee, Among Us, Fall Guys, and how to donate to various causes. That is a full content calendar hiding in a single menu click.

The question to ask with Year in Search results is not just “was this popular?” but “is it still growing?” Alston clicks on “how to cut men’s hair at home,” zooms the trend chart out to five years, and shows that the line was still pointing upward heading into 2021. That means there is still a valid and growing audience for that content. A creator who builds a YouTube channel around beginner barbering tutorials, links Amazon affiliate offers for clippers (Wahl and Andis sets run $30 to $80 on Amazon), beard butter, and styling products, and publishes companion blog posts with related queries from the Trends tool, can build a passive income stream on a topic that Google’s data confirms is still rising. The Year in Search feature is how you find topics like that before everyone else wakes up to them.

Alston also points out that “how to make whipped coffee” was a breakout topic from 2020. A coffee accessories channel or blog could trace a direct line from that trend to affiliate offers for milk frothers, coffee makers, and specialty beans. The income potential from a Year in Search topic does not expire the moment January 1 rolls over. If the five-year trend line is still climbing, the audience is still there and still buying.

Finding the Right Affiliate Program

Once you have a trending topic confirmed by Google Trends data, the next job is to find an affiliate program that pays you to speak about it. Alston walks through three approaches in the video, and each one fits a different situation.

Amazon Associates is the starting point for most beginners. Amazon sells almost everything, commissions run from 1% to 10% depending on category, and buyer trust in the Amazon brand is already built. Alston searches for beard oil on Amazon and shows products ranging from $10 to $27. At a 4% commission rate that is $0.40 to $1.08 per sale. That sounds small until you have a video with 50,000 views generating several hundred sales per month from a description link. At that point the math becomes a real income.

ClickBank and ShareASale are marketplaces where brands list their affiliate programs alongside their commission terms. Rates on these platforms are often much higher than Amazon, especially for digital products on ClickBank, which can pay 30% to 75% per sale. If the trend you found on Google Trends has a strong digital product angle, including online courses, software subscriptions, or downloadable resources, these two networks are worth checking before defaulting to Amazon’s lower rates.

Direct affiliate programs are found by searching the topic plus “affiliate program” in Google. Alston finds the Texas Beard Company affiliate program this way. Direct programs sometimes pay higher commissions than marketplace programs because there is no middleman taking a cut, and smaller brands are often more motivated to grow their affiliate network. The tradeoff is that smaller brands carry more risk that the program disappears or that payment timelines get inconsistent. Vet the brand before committing significant content production time to it.

Alston’s practical advice before committing to any affiliate program: test the product yourself if you can. Promoting a bad or misleading product destroys audience trust faster than anything else, and affiliate marketing is built on trust over the long run. The commission check you earn from one bad recommendation is not worth the audience damage.

What Content to Actually Create

After confirming a trend and matching it to an affiliate program, the third variable is which content format to use. Alston covers three options in the video, and they are not interchangeable. Each one fits a different type of trend and a different creator workflow.

YouTube videos are Alston’s primary recommendation for most creators working with Google Trends data. He shows that a beard oil YouTube video from just one month ago already had 2,700 views, and an older comparison video in the same niche had reached 1.2 million views. The demand is documented. The format he recommends is a listicle or review structure, affiliate links in the description, and a thumbnail that matches the exact search phrase you pulled from the Related Queries section in Google Trends. Matching your thumbnail and title text to real search queries is the difference between a video that gets found and one that does not.

Blog posts work particularly well for longer-tail queries, which are the specific multi-word phrases you find in the Related Queries section of Google Trends. A post titled “Best Beard Oil for Black Men With Sensitive Skin: 7 Options Tested” targets a narrower reader than a generic “best beard oil” search and typically faces less competition on Google Search. Less competition means a faster path to page-one rankings and consistent affiliate clicks from readers who are deep in the buying process.

TikTok is the third recommendation, particularly for real-time trending topics where speed matters most. Alston notes in the video that there are affiliate programs specifically built for TikTok creators. A 60-second video on a topic that is trending in Real-Time Searches, with a link in bio pointing to an affiliate product, can generate meaningful traffic inside a short window if the video picks up early engagement from the algorithm. TikTok rewards speed and simplicity more than polish, which makes it the natural match for the real-time trending searches method.

Not sure which income stream fits your background and schedule?

Answer a few questions and get a personalized recommendation at finder.platformproof.com.

A Repeatable Four-Step Process

Here is how to run the Google Trends method as a consistent weekly practice rather than a one-time experiment that fades after the first attempt.

Weekly trend audit: Open trends.google.com. Check the homepage for current breakouts. Open the Explore page and note the top three to five topics in your niche area. Log them in a simple spreadsheet with the trend direction: up, flat, or declining. You are looking for topics that are rising or holding steady, not ones already past their peak.
Affiliate match: For the top topic from your audit, paste the keyword plus “affiliate program” into Google. Check Amazon Associates, ClickBank, and ShareASale. Pick the program with the best combination of commission rate and brand trust. If you cannot find a program in those three networks, check the brand’s own website footer for an affiliate or partner page.
Content format decision: If the trend is breaking in real time (within the past 24 hours), publish something fast: a TikTok, a YouTube Short, or a 600-word blog post. If the trend is steady over weeks or months from the Explore page or Year in Search, invest in a longer-form YouTube video or a 1,500-plus-word blog post with SEO-targeted headers drawn directly from the Related Queries section.
Publish and track: Include your affiliate link in every piece of content. After 30 days, check your affiliate dashboard to see which content drove clicks and which drove actual sales. Double down on the formats and topic categories that converted. The Trends tool is free, but the data your own affiliate dashboard gives you on which audiences buy is more valuable than any paid research tool on the market.

Honest Drawbacks to Know Before You Start

Google Trends shows relative search interest on a scale of 0 to 100, not absolute search volume. A topic scoring 100 on the chart means it is at peak popularity for that time period. It does not tell you whether that translates to 100 searches per month or 1 million. You need a separate tool alongside Trends to get actual volume numbers. Google Keyword Planner is free. Ahrefs and Semrush are paid but give more granular data on competition and estimated clicks.

Real-time and daily trends move fast. If you spot a trending topic on Monday and publish your content Thursday, the wave has likely already passed. The real-time searches method only works for creators who can produce and publish within hours, not days. If your production process takes a week, focus on the slower-moving trends from the Explore page and Year in Search rather than daily trending searches.

Amazon Associates commission rates dropped significantly in April 2020 across many categories and have not fully recovered. Home improvement and furniture, which once paid 8%, now pay 3%. If your trending topic lands in a low-commission Amazon category, the math on your content investment gets tighter. Check the current Amazon Associates commission schedule before building an entire campaign around Amazon affiliate revenue from a category you have not verified.

Find Your X

Google Trends tells you what people want. Your skill set and available hours determine whether you can speak to it with enough depth to earn their trust and their click. If you are not sure which niche or affiliate income model matches what you actually know and what you can realistically execute, start at finder.platformproof.com. Answer a few questions about your background and what you want your day to look like, and get a recommendation built around the skills you already have today.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Google Trends free to use?

Yes. Google Trends is completely free. You can access it at trends.google.com without creating an account or providing payment information. The only thing you need is a browser and an internet connection.

Does Google Trends show actual monthly search volume numbers?

No. Google Trends shows relative interest on a scale of 0 to 100, where 100 represents peak popularity for the term within the selected time frame and geography. For actual monthly search volume figures, you need a separate tool such as Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, or Semrush.

Can I use Google Trends if I already have an established niche?

Yes, and it is actually more useful when you have a defined niche. You can type your niche’s core keywords into the search bar, compare them against each other, and use the Related Queries section to find specific subtopics your audience is actively searching for right now that you may not have covered yet.

What affiliate network should a complete beginner start with?

Amazon Associates is the most beginner-friendly option because the products are familiar to buyers, the signup process is straightforward, and buyers already have trust in the Amazon brand. The commission rates are lower than some other networks, but the conversion rates tend to be higher because of that existing trust. Getting your first affiliate sale through Amazon is easier than through most other programs.

How quickly do you need to publish content on a trending topic?

It depends on the type of trend. Real-time and daily searches require same-day publishing to capture meaningful traffic from the wave. Trending topics from the 12-month Explore page give you more runway: a week or two to produce a well-researched piece is reasonable. Year in Search topics from the previous year can justify an even longer production window, since the audience is still building rather than peaking.

Do you need to show your face to do affiliate marketing on YouTube?

No. As Alston specifically mentions in the video, several channels covering stimulus check news in 2021 never showed the creator’s face and were still pulling thousands of daily views. Screen recordings, slideshow-style presentations, and voiceover-only formats are all used successfully by affiliate marketers on YouTube. The content and the keyword targeting matter more than whether your face appears on screen.

What is the Year in Search feature on Google Trends?

Year in Search is a recap of the most-searched breakout topics from the previous calendar year, accessible through the main menu on Google Trends. You can view previous years’ data to find topics that broke out and then check the five-year trend chart to see whether interest is still rising. Topics still climbing after their breakout year represent content opportunities with a growing audience rather than a fading one.

Can Google Trends data be used for TikTok affiliate marketing?

Yes. Alston notes in the video that affiliate programs specifically designed for TikTok creators do exist. You can use Google Trends’ Real-Time Searches to identify a topic that is breaking right now, create a short video quickly, and drive viewers to an affiliate link through your TikTok bio or the platform’s native product linking features. The real-time method and TikTok are a natural pairing because both reward speed over production quality.

Sources

Google Trends: trends.google.com
Amazon Associates affiliate program: affiliate-program.amazon.com
ClickBank affiliate marketplace: clickbank.com
ShareASale affiliate network: shareasale.com
CES 2021 referenced in video: ces.tech
Alston Godbolt, “How To Use Google Trends For Affiliate Marketing 2021,” YouTube, 2021