How does Google Trends calculate results

google-trends

"Football" in category sport has more searches than "football" in search term. To me, it doesn't make sense. "Football" in sport should be included in "football" search term. How does Google even know in what category should they put a search when someone types in "football"?
Another thing: is for example "chess online" search included in "chess"? It would be helpful if it was, although not sure if it is feasible from Google's perspective to include all exceptions like that.

Thank you in advance for help.

Best Answer

According to Google:

Each data point is divided by the total searches of the geography and time range it represents to compare relative popularity. Otherwise, places with the most search volume would always be ranked highest.

The resulting numbers are then scaled on a range of 0 to 100 based on a topic’s proportion to all searches on all topics.

Note people likely click the football category rather than searching for Football.

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