How to compare Google Trends across countries on one scale

The problem: every lookup has its own 100

In Google Trends the highest point of a chart is always 100. Look up "durian" for Singapore, then for Malaysia, and both charts peak at 100. That says each market is at its own high, not that the two markets are equal. The numbers are an index drawn from a sample of searches, not search counts.

So a spreadsheet built from separate country lookups compares nothing. The numbers only mean something against each other when they come from the same request.

The built-in fix has a limit: Google's compare request accepts at most five items. A sixth returns an error (tested 18 October 2026). Anyone comparing six or more markets has to work around that.

How to compare markets properly

1. Up to five markets: one request. Put the same search term in all five. The values share one scale, and 100 is the term's highest point across those markets.
2. More than five: pick an anchor. Take the market with the highest interest in the first request as the anchor.
3. Chain the next requests. Each further request holds the anchor plus up to four new markets. Multiply the new markets by (anchor in the first request) divided by (anchor in this request), so they sit on the first request's scale.
4. Check the anchor is strong enough. Google reports whole numbers. If the anchor reads under about 10 in either request, the multiplier is too coarse to trust, and those markets should be treated as being on a separate scale.
5. Rescale so the overall peak is 100, and keep a note of which markets share a scale.

The same search term needs the same settings throughout: the same time range and the same category.

A worked example: kopi and matcha in six markets

The figures below come from one run of the Aye Bot Google Trends scraper on 18 October 2026: the terms "kopi" and "matcha", Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines, over the past 12 months (54 weekly points). Six markets cannot fit in one Google request, so each term was fetched in two requests and joined through an anchor (Indonesia for "kopi", Singapore for "matcha"). Each term has its own scale: 100 is that term's highest point in any of the six markets.

"kopi": average interest over 12 months, 0-100 scale

Indonesia averages 86.0 and peaks at 100 (week of 4 October 2026). Malaysia averages 44.4, Singapore 15.9. Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam are at or near zero. Read on one scale, Indonesia's average is about 5.4 times Singapore's (86.0 divided by 15.9). Looked up one at a time, both would have shown a peak at 100.

"matcha": average interest over 12 months, 0-100 scale

Singapore has the highest average (46.1) and the Philippines the highest single week (100, week of 2 August 2026, against an average of 33.9). The two terms' columns are not comparable with each other: "kopi" at 86.0 and "matcha" at 46.1 sit on different scales, because each term is scaled to its own peak. Compare markets within a term, not terms across tables.

Source: Google Trends data collected 18 October 2026 by the scraper, sample file acceptance-orchestrator-compare.json. Data source: Google Trends (https://www.google.com/trends).

When this matters

• Market entry research. Which of six or eight markets already searches for your category, and in which is it growing?
• Regional SEO. Where to put translation and local pages first, based on relative demand by country.
• Brand and product demand. Whether a term that is popular in one market is a niche in the next one.

One caution: relative interest is not a market size. Use it to rank markets and spot timing, then check with sales or survey data before committing money.

Doing it yourself in Google Trends

1. Open Google Trends and enter one search term.
2. Set the country to your first market. Click Compare and add the same term again, with the second country.
3. Repeat until you have five markets. Each line is now on one scale; read the values against each other.
4. For a sixth market, run a second comparison that contains your strongest market again plus the new ones, then apply the anchor multiplier from the method above.
5. Download each chart as CSV and do the multiplication in a spreadsheet. Keep the time range identical.

This is fine for one-off checks. It becomes slow past two or three terms or eight or more markets.

Let a scraper do the chaining

The Google Trends Scraper: Multi-Country Compare + Trending Now on the Apify Store takes up to 5 keywords and up to 15 countries (or a preset such as Southeast Asia, which is the default) and returns each market's interest over time on one 0-100 scale per keyword. Every record says how its scale was built (google_native, anchor_rescaled or separate_scales) and which markets share it. It also returns related queries, interest by subregion and the daily trending searches for the same countries.

As published in the Actor's README, one keyword across six countries costs about US$0.07 at the Store's pay-per-event prices. The anchor chain was checked against Google's own five-market request: within 1 point at all 54 weekly points for six markets. It is an unofficial interface and can break if Google changes it; the README lists the limits.

Open the scraper on Apify

Questions

Why can I not compare two countries by looking them up one at a time in Google Trends?

Google Trends scales each lookup so that its own highest point reads 100. A one-country lookup for Singapore and another for Malaysia each peak at 100, whatever the real gap in search interest. The two charts are not on the same scale, so the heights say nothing about which market is bigger.

How many countries can Google Trends compare at once?

Google's compare request accepts at most five items. A sixth item returns an error (tested on 18 October 2026). To compare more markets you need several requests joined through a shared anchor market.

Does Google Trends show how many searches there were?

No. The numbers are an index from 0 to 100 built from a sample of searches, not search counts. Two requests a few minutes apart can differ by a point, and low-volume terms show zeros.

What is an anchor market?

A market that appears in every request, so that the requests can be joined. If the anchor reads 40 in the first request and 20 in the second, every market in the second request is multiplied by 2 to sit on the first request's scale. The anchor needs enough volume (at least 10 on the 0-100 scale) for the factor to be reliable.

Can I do this without code?

Yes, for up to five markets: open Google Trends, add one search term, then use Compare to add the other countries. Beyond five markets, or if you want the data as a table for a spreadsheet, a scraper that does the chaining is quicker.