Trends
Posted by HeyAmarettoNov 16

puzzle
Every once in a while, I check out Google trends. I tend to be hopelessly outclassed when it comes to- oh, I don’t know- knowing what people think is topical.
I mean, I was the girl with the red Devo jumpsuit in high school. I was either really edgy, or so far out of it that I would never reenter orbit. So it is no wonder that a good half of the trending terms are things I have never heard of.
Leaving aside the sports and the sex trends, neither of which I would expect to be familiar with, and you get these, for example:
- We’ve got Miley Cyrus dead. I hadn’t heard of that, and just as well- it isn’t true.
- When appulous was tiny – the rest of this is: it ran on a VPS provided by __________.com. Okay, I am not as smart as I thought I was.
- Gus is a bug – children’s book… why?
Does it have anything to do with this:
- Kelly blue book, BJ Wholesale Club Locations, sams club, jet blue reservations, black friday 2009 walmart ad, washington state unemployment: all indicative of the times, I’d say
- Chimpanzee rips womans face off- at least they are spelling “chimpanzee” correctly, although who am I to mock voyeurism, given the subject of this post?
In one sense, I am missing it all, because what I would consider my personal trending topics just aren’t important enough to make it here. But it feels good to swim in the mainstream for a bit.
But- as an aside- what I see here backs up an observation that Rob Hahn had made in a post (although I couldn’t find it to link here). People know what they want to find when they search- they just need to know where to get it. They aren’t cruising around with a vague idea of what they are interested in. They know specifically what they want to learn more about. They aren’t checking out primate behavior – they are tracking down Chimpanzee rips womans face off.
Or more appropriate in a business sense- they aren’t searching “real estate.” They want to find “3 bedroom homes in downtown Shirley, MA.”















3 comments
Comment by Ian Greenleigh on November 16, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Diane-
You have a refreshing perspective. There is no value in being in front of buyers from all over the country if you can only help them with your market. Thus, it makes more sense to do what you’re doing, keep getting the long-tail searchers and the ones that already have a clearer picture of what they’re looking for. By which traffic you drive to yourself, you are picking the types of sales interactions you’d like to have. Don’t sweat the trends.
Comment by HeyAmaretto on November 17, 2009 at 3:59 am
Well, if you were a great believer in mailing out postcards, it would be like plastering the whole country with postcards and hoping to drive business that way to your little town in Nebraska. Doesn’t make that much sense.
I was listening to Gary Vaynerchuk’s Inman Connect keynote again the other day, and he points out that consumers are more educated about what they want. Maybe so, but what they definitely are is more focused. I can remember my parents listening to car salesman after car salesman when making their next purchase, even though my father had worked as an auto mechanic. There was just that assumption that the salesperson would provide you information of value.
I don’t see that consumer attitude now- salespeople have, I would say, killed that level of trust.
But I will say one thing for trends and public opinion. I no longer have that red jumpsuit.
Pingback by Chimpanzee Rips Womans Face Off | Tomb Raider Halloween Costume on November 27, 2009 at 4:14 pm
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