Due to constant changes in the Google trends site, maintaining a package has become untenable. I'm leaving it up as a guide to how integrate python and R more than anything else. There's a fully native package called GTrendsR with native support for the site that currently works.
Because of changes in Google's implementation of the trends package, the python end of the API needs to be updated. I am currently in the process of working on this but the package as it stands is broken until I fix the backend Python code. I'm sorry for any inconvenience.
rGtrends is an interface for a python Google trends API created by [Sal Uryasev](Sal Uryasev). It works by downloading a temporary CSV within a python environment, parsing it, sending it to R, and parsing it a bit more into a dataframe. As of 9/27/2012 Google changed it's interface for Trends and merged it with insight. At the moment only raw search volume data can be downloaded. Once the python code is updated I will return the functionality of parsing search results by region and language.
See a full tutorial here
Installation can be done one of two ways.
The first is via devtools:
- Download devtools
- run the following snippet:
require(devtools)
install_github("rGtrends","emhart") - Download the zipped source from github
- Install the zip file with your preferred method, from within the R GUI, or the command line "
R CMD INSTALL (unzipped directory)"