Interesting article over on Techcrunch on using Google's own technology to game the system:
Some Big Sites Are Using Google Trends To Direct Editorial

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I've used it once or twice in the past. When I was doing a review on behalf of an online shopping company (based outside of Ireland), I used Trends to match high ranking key words to the meta tags, and in one case, even the product line. The website was selling home and garden machinery, but by looking at the Trends, I noted that perhaps they should sell Garden Tools as well. They're now selling lots of garden tools, and from what I gathered from the owner when I was talking to him soon after, is that a higher incline of traffic is now swinging over from Google.

It is an effective method of gathering traffic, but it took me about four weeks of spending about 15-20 minutes working on everyday (on average).

So can it help you identify keywords people are looking for that might not match your own descriptions? ie. if I call an object / service by one name, which may be correct, people could actually be looking for it under a totally different name

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Google Alerts is another way to use Google to identify keywords and themes for content for your own site and hence drive traffic.

This is where you should use a keyword tool, like WordTracker or WordZe (aff. link).

Personally I use the latter (WordZe) as it's cheaper and better. WordZe goes for under $40/month, while WordTracker is just under $60/month. Google Trends and Google Adwords Keyword Tool both have their limitations. IMHO

Also this is a handy tool for the pulse on searches : Google Trends: Oct 18, 2008

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Exactly.

It also gives you a better idea of what your target market are looking for and under what keywords. It's not the be all and end all of SEO, but it sure is an extremely handy and effective tool.

Another problem I have found with this is that trying to explain to the people creating and updating the products to work with things like Google Trends to maximize sales, and that copy & paste from the manafacturers website simple isn't effective enough.