Thulani Mtsambiwa
The world is constantly evolving, and so is the way we search for information. As we move further into 2023, we thought we could take a look at the Google search trends that have changed and emerged so far this year, compared to previous periods. In this article, we will explore the top search trends in the UK so far in 2023, and what they mean for businesses and individuals alike.
This blog utilises data from Google Trends, to compare search interests over time for various keywords.
Following an uncertain 2022 in the UK, with the government’s announcement of a ‘mini-budget’ in September/ October, we can see that searches for GBP remain high in 2023 (although not as high as at the time of the announcement).
The amount of search interest observed for ‘GBP’ is higher than it has been for years, averaging more interest than the days around the Brexit announcement (excluding the interest in the month of Brexit, June 2016, which still maintains the highest spike in interest ever). For some additional context, search interest for GBP since 2004 is displayed below, where we can see that we are approaching brexit-level searches for GBP!
As expected, searches for King Charles hit an all time high in September last year, but as we approach his coronation in May 2023, we can see that search interest is beginning to climb again. It will be interesting to see how far this climbs to – and if it can get anywhere near where it was last year.
Update 24/05/2023
I wanted to look at the above data again once King Charles’ Coronation had occurred, and looking at the below graph, we can see just how high it spiked! Interestingly, though, it still didn’t quite reach the search interest as September 2022.
Following a global pandemic that forced many people’s working environments to change, we can see the search interest in ‘working from home’ has steadily declined so far in 2023. Does this reflect people’s desire to go back to working in the office, or just the increased stability they feel they will not be forced to work remotely in future? The graph below shows the search interest for ‘working from home’ over the last 5 years – a good time range to gauge how interest has spiked with different variants / waves of the pandemic.
Taking this data one step further, we looked into the search volumes compared with the active cases of coronavirus in the UK, to see if there would be some similarities:
Looking into the above, both graphs are using the same date ranges, but there is no clear trend with active cases and search interest in working from home. However, when we look further, and highlight the announcements of national lockdowns in the UK, we can see a clear pattern with the search interest:
As we move further into 2023, it will be interesting to see how these trends change, and what influences this has. There may also be another large event which influences an emerging trend – only time can tell! Using google search data is a great way to look into search interest over-time, however, this data can often be interpreted in different ways, and so it is best to take all conclusions in this blog with a pinch of salt – as these are just interpretations of large data sets!
If big data and search data is something you are interested in, I would highly recommend picking up a copy of “Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us about Who We Really Are”. This is an entertaining read that focuses on big data sets and how they can be used to discover some interesting insights – that otherwise we may not be able to tell.