> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.surnex.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Explore trends

> Compare search interest over time for up to five keywords.

**Trends → Explorer** charts relative search interest over time. Enter *"keywords, separated by commas"* and submit.

You can compare up to **five** keywords in one chart — anything beyond the fifth is dropped silently, so keep the list short and deliberate.

## The chart

An interest-over-time line per keyword, plotted on a shared axis so you can compare shapes directly.

Values are **relative, not absolute**. The scale is indexed against the highest point in the series, so a line at 100 is that keyword's own peak within the range — not a search volume. Two keywords on the same chart *are* comparable to each other, which is the reason to plot them together rather than separately.

For actual monthly search volumes, use [keyword research](/keywords/research).

## What to use it for

**Seasonality.** A term that spikes every December needs content published in October, not December. The [volume figure](/keywords/metrics#volume) in keyword research is a twelve-month average and hides this completely.

**Direction.** A keyword with solid volume and a line trending down for two years is a declining term. The average won't tell you; the shape will.

**Terminology.** Plot competing phrasings against each other — the industry term against the term customers actually use. This is the most valuable use of the page, because the answer often contradicts what a team assumes internally.

**Timing.** A spike tells you when interest arrives. Comparing your brand against a category term shows whether you rise with the category or independently of it.

## Live, not stored

This is one of only two pages in Surnex that fetches on demand — [Trending now](/trends/trending) is the other. There's no background collection, nothing stored, and no history of past searches beyond your recent-searches list on the page.

Because it's live, re-running the same comparison later can return slightly different data. See [How data collection works](/projects/data-collection).

## Locale

Searches use your [project's location and language](/projects/settings). Interest patterns differ sharply by market — a seasonal term in one hemisphere is inverted in the other — so check the project locale matches the market you're asking about.

## Related

* [Trending now](/trends/trending) — what's spiking right now, rather than a term you chose
* [Keyword metrics](/keywords/metrics) — absolute volume, difficulty, and intent
* [Research keywords](/keywords/research) — turn a trend into a tracked keyword