Gtrends Made Easy is Working Again
It looks like Google has re-instated the keyword that is the base comparison phrase for calculating GTrends. That means that GTME is working again. I don’t know if Google will remove the base comparison phrase again or not, but for now, GTME is working!
I hope everyone takes advantage of this opportunity to find those niche phrases!
Best Wishes,
Benjamin
P.S. Thanks to Shannon & Chris for letting me know that Google had re-instated the phrase. 
Robert de Paola said,
Wrote on May 29, 2008 @ 1:49 am
Just tried running some small searche volumes - 1- 3 keywords ..but it looks like Google is blocking automated searches using the trends tool. Is there a fix or workaround this? It’s frustrating…
Robert
benjamin said,
Wrote on May 29, 2008 @ 8:21 am
Hey Robert,
I just ran a test moments ago and didn’t have any problems getting results back for the keywords.
I don’t know if it might have something to do with your location or network, but it doesn’t appear Google is blocking anything when I run GTME.
Sorry!
Best Wishes,
Benjamin
Ben Coons said,
Wrote on May 29, 2008 @ 2:03 pm
I should point out that I think google keeps track of your IP address, and when they see so many requests so quickly they assume you are a bot (which you kind of are). If you manually go to the google Trends page when you start getting -1 results, it will ask you to enter a captcha.
I don’t know if google will ban an IP address for too much activity, but it might be wise using the tool sparingly. Actually, Benjamin, a cool feature would be a configurable time delay that would post searches periodically (once a minute) so that large research projects could be batched, but not cause google grief.
benjamin said,
Wrote on May 29, 2008 @ 8:37 pm
Hi Ben,
You are correct in that Google does track IP addresses. When I first developed the tool only for myself, my IP got banned quite a bit (temporarily) because I was sending requests too quickly.
To offset this fact, I implemented a random time interval of 5-15 seconds between requests.
Since implementing that feature, I have personally never had Google ban my IP address and I have let GTME run for a week straight without any problems.
However, I do like your idea of making it configurable and when I get the time to actually work on a new release, I will try to add that feature.
Best Wishes,
Benjamin
Paul said,
Wrote on May 30, 2008 @ 1:42 am
I just ran a large batch of keywords and I got all -1, so Google must be banning my IP.
Would be nice if we could use a proxy? or get the time interval thing.
Bejamin, how many keywords do you do at one time?
thanks
paul
benjamin said,
Wrote on May 31, 2008 @ 10:32 am
Hey Paul,
Sorry you are having problems too.
To answer your question about the number of keywords I run at one time, it depends on the niche.
I use GTME with Wordze, so I just put some high level phrases as seed phrases in and let Wordze give me all of it’s related phrases and then let GTME process those.
I have run 80-100k phrases at one time before, but typically it is 10-20k.
For example, if you put the keyword “pregnant” and “pregnancy” in GTME and let Wordze give you all of the broad match terms for those high level phrases, then you will get Thousands of phrases that GTME will process for you.
Anyway, that is how I use GTME (since I originally wrote it to automate my own research and then decided to give it away to others if they wanted it).
Best Wishes,
Benjamin
Jim said,
Wrote on May 31, 2008 @ 6:29 pm
hmm, I can only manage about 20 keywords before the rest show up as -1 and i get the captcha
I’d love to figure out a way around as I just found the program.
benjamin said,
Wrote on June 1, 2008 @ 9:14 pm
Hey Jim,
Wow, I don’t know why there seems to be a problem for some of you with processing keywords.
I ran a quick test after reading your comment and processed 50 keywords and didn’t get a -1 at all (or the captcha).
I will try to make some time to put out a new version that allows for a variable time between requests that you can set, along with a few other features people have asked for.
Best Wishes,
Benjamin
Jim said,
Wrote on June 2, 2008 @ 4:16 pm
Well I tested it a bit more and it seems if i go past 65 or so keywords in one run then it will do -1 for the rest. I’m not sure how long I have to wait inbetween, but it isn’t the end of the world yet. I do look forward to any new versions you put out though, I appreciate the work you put into this program.
Kevin said,
Wrote on June 14, 2008 @ 7:06 am
I too am having problems with the -1 GTrends count.
I just found this tool early this week and tried it on only 1 list of under 200 keywords. It worked great! That was on Tuesday.
On Friday (yesterday), I tried it on another small list of under 50 keywords… I got all -1’s for the GTrends count.
This morning, I whittled the list down to 25… then to only 9… Same result.
Meanwhile, all this time I have been able to manually go into GTrends in both Firefox and IE without a problem. No captcha required.
I’d really love to see this get fixed because it seems like such a promising tool!
Kevin said,
Wrote on June 14, 2008 @ 8:01 am
Correction: Although I thought my initial test list worked fine, upon closer inspection I’ve now noticed I only got 63 results back before it actually started spitting out -1’s for the rest of the 195 keyword list.
So… what browser engine is this software actually using to request the results? Since I’m able to go in without a problem using Firefox and IE, it must be something else?
Martin said,
Wrote on June 18, 2008 @ 9:37 pm
Hi,it seems that the last change et Google Trends affected the software. I get -1 for any keywords, even the ones that i know they have a lot of searches…
Do you know when this bug will be fix ?
thanks
Andi said,
Wrote on June 19, 2008 @ 8:35 am
Its not working at all for me again -1 everytime
Alexandr said,
Wrote on June 24, 2008 @ 10:23 pm
I have the same problem. I entered ~ 20 keywords and had “-1″ in GTrends column. I changed IP and try to get result fo one keyword - “-1″ again.. Maybe google block a range IP addresses?
I have a bad karma =)
Thank you, anyway. Really usefull tool.