With Google Trends, you can compare the world’s interest in your favorite topics. Enter up to five topics and see how often they’ve been searched on Google over time. Google Trends also shows how frequently your topics have appeared in Google News stories, and in which geographic regions people have searched for them most.

I tried experimenting by searching different chemicals in Google Trends.

For example, searching for Acetic Acid, retrieved a news story about projected forecast for the world market of Acetic Acid by the year 2015.

World Market for Acetic Acid Projected to Reach 11.8 Million Tons in 2015, According to New Report by Global Industry Analysts, Inc.

See More News about Acetic Acid.

Some other examples:

Methanol

Ethylene Oxide

See More News about Ethylene Oxide.

Try this:
Find out which countries have people have searched for ‘Phenol’ the most?

The Chemical Database database will allow the user to retreive information for any of 25,496 hazardous chemicals or ‘generic’ entries based on a keyword search. Potential keywords include names, formula and registry numbers (CAS, DOT, RTECS, EINECS, Beilstein and Merck). Formula are represented in Hill format for searching and a more descriptive format for viewing.

Access: The Chemical Database

See: Phenol

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced the launch of a Web site, DOepatents, which allows search and retrieval of information from a collection of more than 20,000 patent records. The database represents a growing collection of patents resulting from R&D supported by DOE. DOEpatents consists of bibliographic records, with full text where available via either a PDF file or an HTML link to the record at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Read the full story in Information Today at:
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced the launch DOEpatents

Access DoE Patent Information at: DOepatents