What did you search for in 2011?
We’re now heading into the last week before Christmas and the end of yet another year. Just like many others I’m now winding down ready for the holidays. As one of the last postings of the year I thought I’d do a quick Google Zeitgeit 2011 for the UK with wildlife as the topic.
Finding top search terms in Google.
Google offers some great tools for webmasters and the public to use for research and for fun. One of the best has to be Google Insight for Search. This is the tool I’ll be using to find out what were the big search terms in the UK for wildlife.
So lets click on the link and fire up Insight for Search. We don’t want to put in any search terms because that’s the thing we want to find out about. We do want to restrict our research to the UK and the last 12 months in the drop down boxes.
Top Google searches for wildlife in UK.
Now we want to find out the top search terms for the wildlife category. So we click on the drop down box for categories. We then need to click on the little drop down arrow next to the pets and animals category. Then click on the term wildlife and then the search button.
We are now provided with the top 10 search terms that people in the UK used and have been assigned to the wildlife topic. We also have the top 10 fastest rising terms of the year.
Obviously it’s all computer generated so is not perfect. The second most popular term ‘grooveshark’ is not a search for a type of shark but for the streaming mp 3 and online radio stations. Saying that it does give an accurate reflection of search terms.
Top 10 Google wildlife searches.
So the top 10 wildlife related search terms for the UK in 2011 were:
1. Z00,
2. Grooveshark,
3. Elephant,
4. Tiger,
5. Tiger tiger,
6. Safari,
7. Lion,
8. Shark,
9. Wildlife,
10. Safari park.
Fastest rising wildlife search terms.
The top 10 fastest rising wildlife related search terms were:
1. Wombats,
2. Honey badger,
3. Edinburgh Zoo,
4. Elephant tube,
5. Polar bear,
6. Antelope,
7. Sloth,
8. Elephant,
9. Gorilla,
10. Lion.
Google Insight for Search is not just a great fun tool or useful research tool. It can also be used to look for trends that businesses can exploit. For instance I’m currently in the process of finalising Wildlife News Travel’s wildlife holidays for next year – they’ll start to be published just after Christmas. So lets see what are the top destinations being searched for this year by wildlife lovers.
Top ecotourism searches in Google.
Obviously these are what people are looking for – and what people look for and what people actually buy can be totally different things not least because of affordability. But lets take a look at the most searched for eco-tour destinations of the last 12 months.
Again we select 12 months and the UK as options in the drop downs. Then we click on the little arrow next to Travel and again next to Speciality Travel. We can then select ecotourism.
We can now find the top 10 search terms of 2011 for ecotourism and the 10 fastest rising search terms.
Top 10 ecotourism searches of 2011.
Top 10 search terms for ecotourism were:
1. Project Eden,
2. Eden,
3. North Pole,
4. Portable North Pole,
5. Sri Lanka,
6. The Eden project,
7. Whale watching,
8. Workspace,
9. Eden project cornwall,
10. Eden cornwall.
Fastest rising ecotourism searches of 2011.
The top 10 fastest rising terms for ecotourism were:
1. The North Pole,
2. South Pole,
3. Intralinks,
4. northpole,
5. Project eden,
6. Eden sessions,
7. North pole,
8. Whale watching,
9. Eden,
10. Portable north pole.
Portable North Pole is of course not some fold up magnetic feature but the video message from Santa web site.
If you’ve wondered why so many travel agencies are in trouble at the moment – even the biggest ones, then stay in the travel section but extend the time frame from the least 12 months to the 2004 to the present date and you’ll see just how bad 2011 has been for travel companies compared to previous years.
There is a bit of a rebound in the holiday trade happening at the moment which will, if past patterns repeat, last until about the end of February before falling down again. We’ll know by Easter if there’s going to be another round of holiday company closures like this year.
Hope you’ve enjoyed a little look at what British people have been searching for in relation to wildlife this year. Have a play around with Insight for Search. It can bring up some interesting statistics and it’s easy to waste an hour or so just playing around.
