Yesterday, Google Trends finally launched hot topics specifically for the UK. This means that you can visit Google.co.uk/trends to view daily trends based on news, Twitter, FriendFeed and “other such messaging services”.

The impact of this is potentially massive for UK-based communicators. When locally-sourced trends based on Google’s data are made accessible, news-jacking or reactionary PR becomes much more targeted and relevant. You can keep abreast of news stories and issues that are naturally being talked about, then respond accordingly. For those within the healthcare space, hot topics (at the time of writing) included ‘pelosi health care’, in reference to Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s comments about the US Senate’s new bill. And for anyone with entertainment on the brain, ‘conan o brien tonight show’ shows massive interest in the television presenter’s last show before Jay Leno’s return.

Though this is more accurate way of seeing what people are talking about than relying on volume of keyword searches alone (as it takes into account editorial coverage and social relevance), the hot topics seem to be extremely US-focused. Fernando Rizo, head of digital media for Ketchum Pleon UK thinks that this could be restrictive until Google irons out the kinks. “This is an invaluable tool for doing opportunistic PR in the US. It would be very welcome here in the UK – but this isn’t it yet. These look like US searches to me – I have a hard time believing that Brits are awake at midnight searching for American Football League playoff games. But it’s definitely one to keep an eye on.”

Hot Searches are also shown on the trends site; the fastest-rising searches with everyday themes removed (such as ‘weather’). As of yet you also can’t view these for the UK alone, only broader terms based on Google.com data. However, these could still be useful for global campaigns, and are sometimes reflective of issues in other regions. ‘Skype down’ sat at number seven yesterday evening for instance, following the prolonged outage of the IM service.

On top of this, you can use the existing search engine on the site to compare up to five phrases of your choice, or Google Insights for Search for an even more comprehensive overview.