More people buying online than ever.
I had a dig into the market this week to see if there is as much negativity as the press would like us to believe. Google Trends is perfect for this exercise, allowing us to see highs and lows of products and industries over given periods. Think outside the box with it and you might spot some opportunities.
What I learned
- There isn’t as much doom and gloom as they’d have us believe.
- It’s clear what was popular during lockdowns.
- What is the intent of your product searches?
- Don’t ignore related queries.
Transcript
Hey, welcome back Rankers. How are you going? There’s a lot of doom and gloom around at the moment. So I was having a look at some of the numbers for our own clients, but also for other things that we are interested in as well, just to see how the market’s going. And I just wanted to share a couple of things with you.
Opportunities via Google Trends
So what we’re looking at here is Google Trends over the last five years. And I’ve got in here houses for sale and mattress for sale. Now, you can see quite clearly, we’ve got a massive uptick as soon as the first lockdown happened in 2020. And whilst we’ve come off those highs in recent times, just after the election, we’re still way above 2019 search volumes. So this is over a five year period.
It’s also interesting, and I had this conversation with someone during the week… G’day, Michael, if you’re watching… And that is to look at your trends over a seven day period, so you start to get a feel, because he was selling mattresses. And I said, my guess is, most of those searches are going to be done at night or when people are getting up or going to bed because that’s the problem. And he said, “Really?” I said, “Yeah.” I said, “It pays to understand the solution you are creating, by understanding the intent of the search in the first place.” And so my point to him was that a lot of these people doing these searches at that time realised that they have a problem with their mattress and they’ve got to get a new one. So what are you doing during those hours? Are your competitors advertising during those hours? Maybe you can, maybe you can go up against them.
Unexpected related queries
And to add a little bit of context, I thought we’d have a look at just two different searches, one that peaked during the first lockdown and one that just plummeted and went through the floor. And you can see there quite clearly, yes, that office chair has come off its highs of 2020, but luxury escapes is making a comeback after just falling through the floor at the same time.
So it just pays to dip into Google Trends every now and again to give you a little bit of a reality check. Go and have a look at the related queries and the related topics. Sometimes you can find things that you didn’t expect trending in related queries. And when you dig into those related queries, you start to understand why Google’s saying they’re trending with a keyword that you’ve put in that may not actually match. And we’ve seen a little bit of that during the week on LinkedIn. Follow me on LinkedIn, that’s where I’m doing all this trend stuff, I’m posting it all up there mainly. And also, I’m back on Twitter, until they censor me, and then I won’t be. So hopefully that’s helpful. If you want to have a chat, then please just email me, [email protected]. And please share, like, subscribe, tell your friends. And we’ll see you soon. Thanks very much. Bye.
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
