What is interesting in the rising searches, which feature several interesting keywords and why we think the term is showing and how the market has shifted.
Im doing a few posts around retail so I thought I would take some time to get my head around how the industry is reacting to the GFC (not Global Flavour Crisis). While I have some clients within the retail sector, they appear to be doing better than others due to a strong brand, quality products and effective online marketing campaigns. Those who don’t have this in place, I believe are struggling to get a decent or even positive ROI for any campaigns.
Using my favourite Google tool “Insights for Search” is a great way to examine how trends have been tracking over the last 5 years and how Google forecast the search trends will continue. What makes the forecast point interesting is that the Google research team recently published an article about how a high percentage of search queries were seasonal and could be predicted upto 12 months ahead. The report outlined that over half of the most popular Google search terms can be predicted 12 months ahead, with several highly predictable categories:
- Health (74%)
- Food & Drink (67%)
- Travel (65%)
The research did find that some categories such as Entertainment have a very low 35% level of predictable queries, this is due to often unpredictable human nature, unforeseen blockbusters/music acts and generally fresh and new words/brands. Retail is another category that does have a number of predictable search queries with obvious spikes around Christmas each year.
Looking at the retail research using Insights for Search one of the areas that seemed to stand out was the number of rising search terms around “retail jobs” being searched for in Australia. This seems to be going against the downward trend in retail search queries but is this would be likely due to increased unemployment levels and increased interest in securing “jobs” but not “employment” which is trending downward.
Search Term: Retail Assistant
What is interesting in the rising searches, which feature several interesting keywords and why we think the term is showing.
retail award (government agreement for minimum conditions,wages)
retail resume (not sure of what is needed on a resume for retail jobs)
retail wages (people looking to find if they are being paid the correct amount or how much they would get paid in a retail job)
retail duties (staff being ask to do extra tasks)
Search Term: Jobs in retail
What is interesting in the rising searches, which feature several interesting keywords and why we think the term is showing.
Jobs in geographic locations (more intention focused searches)
casual jobs (less fulltime jobs available)
Search Term: Retail Jobs
What is interesting in the rising searches, which feature several interesting keywords and why we think the term is showing.
Westfield (world’s leading center operator)
seek (australia’s largest jobs website)
jobs in geographic locations (more intention focused searches)
So with general retail search queries tracking down it is interesting to see that shopping queries show absolutely no change or no predicted change over the next 12 months. So its likely that the GFC is not the end of online retail but a shift in interest and a decrease in how people search for information online. Australian search patterns appear to show an increase in brand terms and geographic locations used to refine search results, highlighting how a client should be running their online campaigns.
