Google just launched Google Trends which can give you a insight into the trends of how popular a specific keyword or keyphrase has been over time.

It lacks specific numbers, but the graphs tells some interesting stories anyway.

Here are a few examples of trends:

• Bird flu
• Cartoons
• Netscape
• Web 2.0

A really neat feature is that you can use Google trends to do comparisons such as:

• Bush vs. Kerry
• Netscape vs. Firefox vs Internet Explorer

I also tried searching for “flowerdelivery” to see if it would spike at specific times each year - Mother’s Day for instance, but all I got back was a “403 Forbidden”.

We’re sorry…

… but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can’t process your request right now.

I then tried “flower delivery” and got back two very distinct spikes plus two minor, but still very visible spikes