Type up to five keywords or phrases in Google's new Google Trends's search box and see how those topics compare to one another in terms of how often they are searched within Google by region, year, and language.

The benefit of Google Trends is to show which keywords people are using to search for sites. This allows you to optimize your site in search results by finding the terms you need to emphasize in your site's content and navigation design.

Google has also developed a "search within a search" tool that lets users stay on Google's webpage while browsing through another site. For example, one can type in "The New York Times" and search for Times's articles on Eliot Spitzer while still on the Google site. Though this feature helps users save steps and arguably offers a better search engine, it detracts advertising revenue from those sites. Futhermore, Google has ads from competitors on the results page, potentially drawing users to those sites instead.

Alan Rimm-Kaufman, a former executive with the electronics retailer Crutchfield, now an Internet Consultant is skeptical about the new feature because it diminishes a Web publisher's role in helping users find potentially useful content. "You may want to editorialize differently when someone searches, and maybe put a premium on certain reporters or content," he said. "This moves you further out of the loop."

James Spanfeller, Chief Executive of Forbes.com, "takes his hat off to Google." He said, "Google is probably trying to get additional usage out of their [name-brand publisher's] product and monetize those page views. Not to be cavalier about it, but sites like The Post and Forbes, which have strong enough brand names, won't lose more than a very small percentage of people who will go to other sites."

Google only has this feature for a handful of sites, and they have the option of turning it off but may not be able to reverse that decision.

Source: OJR, The New York Times through I Want Media