Each year, Google publishes a year-in-review report discussing the year’s search engine trends. The report discusses not only what the most searched terms on the search engine were (world cup, Avicii, Mac Miller) but also how people are using Google. In 2018, Google reported a 500% growth in “near me” mobile searches that contain a variant of “can I buy” or “to buy.” To Google, this suggests that people are no longer using the “near me” function in Google to simply find places nearby. They’re using it to search for specific items, in a specific area.
Part of developing a comprehensive digital marketing campaign, as detailed here, is understanding how customers and potential customers are using the Internet to find your products and your website. Google provides some wonderful tools online to gain an insight into how customers are using search engines to find your products. One free tool is called Google Trends. The graphs and information below all come from Google Trends, which analyzes the popularity of search queries in Google Search across various regions and languages. The graphs scale “Interest Over Time” which represent search interest relative to the highest point in the chart for the given region and time-period. So, a value of 100 is the peak popularity for the term.
Another alternative is “Google Keyword Planner.” To use this tool you must have a Google Ads account. The Keyword Planner lets you search keywords and suggests other words or phrases related to your products and services. It lets you research the trend information for how often certain words are searched and how those searches have changed over time and also gives you suggested bid estimates for each keyword so you can determine your advertising budget.
In today’s digital environment, we strongly encourage members to capitalize on this growing trend and ensure that your company is visible in the place where people search the most.
We would like to recognize Site-Seeker, Inc. for their help in putting together this information.
