Popular in the pandemic – Google searches analysed
What analysts and marketers like about the internet is that everything is measurable – as pointless as it may be in many cases. Yet there is a bunch of internet stats that are helpful or at least entertaining. The latter is in my view a website that analysed Google searches and looked at how popular product search terms were in the pandemic.
For the printing industry most categories are of limited interest as mostly consumer goods made it to the searched item roster. Keywords and categories were sourced from Google product taxonomy. Results are restricted to searches on Google Shopping in the US only. The analysis ranked products and their search terms into three groups.
New Normal were termed the keywords for which the 2020 and 2021 search interest patterns differ from 2019 – which is essentially a continued higher interest since the pandemic. Card games are a great example of a continued higher interest since the pandemic. All items around the home office benefited too, including printers and scanners. Interesting Fax machines made it to the list as well, indicating that savvy Google shoppers still have an interest in faxing.
Unusual keywords were those that exhibited a different search interest pattern in 2020 compared to 2019 and 2021, for example a sudden spike in interest, followed by “normal” search patterns. Jigsaw puzzles is a prime example for this category. Searches did only see a sharp spike at the begin of the pandemic with interest normalising again. Toilet paper is another item in this category, with searches normalising (thank god) after a sudden spike.
Normal keywords were those for which the yearly pattern of search interest was similar across 2019, 2020, and 2021. In the not affected category fall for example calendars – which seem to spike every year in early winter. I probably would have guessed this anyway.
You can give it a try and see here how products were doing and what was popular in the pandemic and what not.
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