Know What's Hot and Write to It

You want to write a fresh article. You want tons of hits. You want it today.

The key to a highly successful news article lies in finding what people are interested in now. Hitting the right theme at just the right moment is like striking gold. You crawl up the search engine results, the hits flood in, and you'll be left smiling.

You could start by lacing your articles with the time-tested phrases based on general assumptions of how people use the Internet. Your list may look like this:

• Boobies
• Celebrities
• Celebrity boobies
• Peanut butter, uses for

This is all great and an excellent mental exercise, but how do you predict what's going to be the hit story of today or, better yet, tomorrow? It's not like the search engines will tell you... will they?

As a matter of fact, they do exactly that and more.

Here's a quick guide to some resources that will can not only tell you what's popular now, but can give you idea's to help overcome writer's block.

Google Trends
The first thing you should notice when you arrive at Google Trends (http://www.google.com/trends/) is the list of Today's Hot Trends. Immediately you have ten terms that could be the ticket to your next popular Associated Content article.

But Google Trends gives you more than that. The search field immediately above Today's Hot Trends allows you to see just how popular key search terms have been over the past few months.

Even more importantly, you can compare terms and find popularity of, for example, "grey" versus "gray" with some information about geography included as well. This can become vital; you may find a synonym for a key term could significantly increase your page views.

Finally, if the Top Ten terms isn't enough, you can also get tracking of the top 100 terms for any day, usually updated hourly. (http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends)

Yahoo Buzz
Yahoo takes a slightly different approach which may be even more useful to helping you overcome writer's block. If you're a fan of writing about a single topic such as celebrities, Yahoo Buzz (http://buzz.yahoo.com/) displays the most popular searches within specific defined categories.

If you are looking for raw information, Yahoo Buzz doesn't come close to Google Trends. But if you want the analysis work done for you, it's the place to go. This search engine will give you topic specific information for a variety of common items, excellent Top Ten lists, as well as easy-to-understand information in blog-format.

Ask IQ
Ask.com breaks information into weekly chunks at http://about.ask.com/en/docs/iq/iq.shtml. While this is less useful for developing the next big story, it is better for writing articles with a little more staying-power.

On the other hand, these terms typically aren't as helpful, including already-crowded search terms such as "myspace" and "youtube" that will not benefit your articles.

However, it does include a "Top Advancing Searches" list. This shows terms that were gaining momentum last week. Often, these terms will be the next big thing.

Search Spy
Still not sure what to write about? Webcrawler has a nifty little tool called Search Spy (http://www.webcrawler.com/info.wbcrwl/searchspy/) that lets you watch exactly what searches are being made at any given moment in time, spelling mistakes and all. Aside from being wonderfully interesting, it can also help inspire topic ideas.

Search Spy allows you to pick an unfiltered edition or a filtered version with adult themes removed to protect youngsters. Both are great ways to kill some writer's block.