After seeing the title of this blog post, you may be thinking to yourself, what is Content-Led SEO?
Every day, we capture the top three keyword phrases in terms of search volume as reported by Google Trends (US Only). Each term has an estimated query volume attached to it, which we also record. The number scale tops out at 10,000,000+ with a lower limit of 200,000+ (sometimes 100,000+). After the conclusion of the month, we look at the phrases we collected along with their volumes to get an understanding of what drove queries for the month.
The Flowers Are Blooming
After reporting what seemed to be lackluster daily search volumes in the month of April, May 2023 queries were more in line with what we usually see. Looking across the data, the death of a music icon was the lone ten million plus queried phrase. Another artist, who’s name was related to a Google Doodle, made our list. We collected keyword for some TV series finales that were popular and a couple presidential candidate names. Sports-related keywords took up most of our list like they do most months except for one league that really owned us. In May 2023, the NBA was the most popular topic and we’re going to prove it to you with our timelines of certain teams and the draft. Let’s get into it.
Simply The Best
Nicknamed “Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll”, Tina Turner was the most searched topic last month according to Google’s Daily Trends
- Tina Turner – 5/24/2023 – 10,000,000+ queries
She passed away on the 24th at her home in Switzerland after years of illness.
Doodle
Google updated their logo on May 5th to celebrate the life of Chinese American Photographer Corky Lee.
- Corky Lee – 5/4/2023 – 5,000,000+ queries
With the logo linked to a result page, each click registered a query so it was recorded by Google Trends. May 5th 1988 was proclaimed to be “Corky Lee Day” by New York City Mayor David Dinkins to recognize his contributions and work.
Movie Premieres And TV Finales
May kicks off the Summer movie season and they are playing in a theater near you. Here are the most searched films last month.
- Guardians of the Galaxy 3 – 5/4/2023 – 500,000+ queries
- Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse – 5/31/2023 – 500,000+ queries
Both of these movies had good opening weekends as predicted by Google search query volume. The month of May traditionally is the final month of TV seasons. This list has the top 3 TV shows that were searched for in the previous month:
- American Idol – 5/21/2023 – 500,000+ queries
- Succession – 5/28/2023 – 200,000+ queries
- Ted Lasso – 5/31/2023 – 200,000+ queries
American Idol’s season 20 finale garnered over a half million queries on the 21st. The series finales of both Succession and Ted Lasso also drove people to search to learn more about them.
Here’s a bonus for you – 81 year old Martha Stewart was featured As 2023 SI Swimsuit Cover Model.
- Martha Stewart Sports Illustrated – 5/15/2023 – 500,000+ queries
According to Google’s Daily Trends, more people search for this topic than the finale of Succession. How about that?
The Met Gala Yet Again
At the end of April 2023, we reported on the query volume attached to this year’s Met Gala. It continued on to the first day of May.
- Met Gala 2023 – 5/1/2023 – 2,000,000+ queries
Since the event actually happened on the 1st, all the queries that occurred in April were more research-related where queries that happened in May were related to the fashion seen on the red carpet.
Chock Full O’ Holidays
Four names of holidays made our list in May 2023. Here’s the timeline of those special days.
- Cinco de Mayo – 5/4/2023 – 1,000,000+ queries
- Happy Mother’s Day – 5/12/2023 – 500,000+ queries
- Mother’s Day – 5/14/2023 – 500,000+ queries
- Memorial Day – 5/28/2023 – 5,000,000+ queries
With over a million queries, we conducted further research into Cinco de Mayo.
The search interest for Cinco de Mayo was the largest it has been in the last five years. It flattened out in the pandemic years, but increased in 2023 to its highest level in this time frame. It is not the highest level of all time though. The peak interest for the holiday occurred in 2017.
Republican Candidates
From the people running for U.S. president in 2024, a couple of names made our list in May 2023.
- Trump – 5/9/2023 – 500,000+ queries
- Ron DeSantis – 5/23/2023 – 200,000+ queries
On the 9th, Donald Trump was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation by a jury. The writer E. Jean Carroll was awarded $5 million in damages. On the 23rd, Ron DeSantis announced his presidential candidacy in a Twitter chat with Elon Musk that was noted as having technical difficulties.
British Royalty
A couple of members of the British Royal Family made Google’s Daily Trends top 3 in May.
- King Charles – 5/5/2023 – 1,000,000+ queries
- Prince Harry – 5/17/2023 – 200,000+ queries
King Charles III had his coronation on May 6th and Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle were allegedly chased by paparazzi on the 17th.
Look At The NBA Keywords
We don’t think we can fully express how the NBA captured the minds of searchers in the month of May 2023 so we will just list out the phrases. Check out the Celtics list!
- Celtics – 5/1/2023 – 1,000,000+ queries
- Celtics – 5/3/2023 – 500,000+ queries
- Celtics – 5/7/2023 – 500,000+ queries
- Celtics – 5/11/2023 – 1,000,000+ queries
- Celtics – 5/14/2023 – 1,000,000+ queries
- Celtics – 5/17/2023 – 1,000,000+ queries
- Celtics – 5/19/2023 – 500,000+ queries
- Boston Celtics – 5/19/2023 – 200,000+ queries
- Celtics – 5/22/2023 – 500,000+ queries
- Celtics – 5/24/2023 – 500,000+ queries
- Celtics – 5/26/2023 – 500,000+ queries
- Celtics – 5/27/2023 – 2,000,000+ queries
- Celtics – 5/28/2023 – 2,000,000+ queries
- Celtics – 5/29/2023 – 2,000,000+ queries
Oh, they had more but these included Miami Heat keywords.
- Heat vs Celtics – 5/25/2023 – 500,000+ queries
- Celtics vs Heat – 5/26/2023 – 500,000+ queries
- Heat vs Celtics – 5/27/2023 – 500,000+ queries
The Heat had their solo keyword phrases as well.
- Miami Heat – 5/8/2023 – 200,000+ queries
- Miami Heat – 5/10/2023 – 200,000+ queries
- Miami Heat – 5/12/2023 – 500,000+ queries
- Miami Heat – 5/21/2023 – 200,000+ queries
- Miami Heat – 5/25/2023 – 500,000+ queries
What about the Western Conference? Oh yeah, they were in our collection too.
- Lakers – 5/3/2023 – 500,000+ queries
- Lakers – 5/6/2023 – 1,000,000+ queries
- Lakers – 5/7/2023 – 500,000+ queries
- Lakers – 5/9/2023 – 1,000,000+ queries
- Lakers – 5/11/2023 – 1,000,000+ queries
- Lakers – 5/12/2023 – 1,000,000+ queries
- Lakers – 5/16/2023 – 1,000,000+ queries
- Lakers – 5/16/2023 – 1,000,000+ queries
- Lakers – 5/18/2023 – 1,000,000+ queries
- Lakers – 5/20/2023 – 1,000,000+ queries
- Lakers – 5/22/2023 – 1,000,000+ queries
- Lebron James – 5/21/2023 – 200,000+ queries
- LeBron James – 5/23/2023 – 200,000+ queries
The Lakers were featured in phrases with other teams too.
- Lakers vs Warriors – 5/11/2023 – 500,000+ queries
- Lakers vs Nuggets – 5/18/2023 – 500,000+ queries
- Lakers vs Nuggets – 5/20/2023 – 500,000+ queries
Lastly, last year’s champs had their list too.
- Warriors – 5/8/2023 – 500,000+ queries
- Warriors – 5/10/2023 – 500,000+ queries
- Golden State Warriors – 5/13/2023 – 200,000+ queries
Besides the playoffs, the NBA had their lottery to set the picks of the draft too. Check out the popularity of this event.
- NBA Draft Lottery – 5/15/2023 – 200,000+ queries
- Victor Wembanyama – 5/15/2023 – 200,000+ queries
- NBA Draft Lottery – 5/16/2023 – 1,000,000+ queries
First, there was pre-hype for the draft lottery with the assumed first overall pick (Victor Wembanyama). Then, there were queries on the night of the lottery itself.
All in all, 41 of the 93 phrases we collected last month were about the NBA. We checked the all time queries related to the league and saw that this season was the most popular since Google Trends started reporting data.
It’s clear that only the NFL is more popular in terms of search in the USA.
Other Sports
Besides basketball, there are other sports. There was one NHL phrase. That accounts for something, right?
- Kraken – 5/13/2023 – 200,000+ queries
European football got more queries than the NHL, making the daily top 3 several times last month.
- Champions League – 5/8/2023 – 1,000,000+ queries
- Real Madrid – 5/17/2023 – 1,000,000+ queries
- Man United vs Chelsea – 5/25/2023 – 200,000+ queries
- Europa League – 5/30/2023 – 200,000+ queries
Then, there was a grab bag of other sports including boxing, horse racing, golf, and car racing.
- Canelo vs Ryder – 5/5/2023 – 500,000+ queries
- Kentucky Derby 2023 – 5/5/2023 – 2,000,000+ queries
- PGA Championship – 5/18/2023 – 500,000+ queries
- Michael Block – 5/20/2023 – 200,000+ queries
- Indy 500 – 5/27/2023 – 500,000+ queries
Sports are the topic to search, for sure.
NVDA stock surge
The American technology company NVIDIA made our list a couple times in May 2023.
- Nvidia stock – 5/24/2023 – 500,000+ queries
- Nvidia stock – 5/30/2023 – 100,000+ queries
They had their Q1 earnings call on the 24th and reported revenue was up 19% from the previous quarter. Then, on the 30th, Nvidia’s market cap reached $1 trillion for the first time.
The company joins Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and the company who helps us put this post together – Google.
Thanks for reading. If you liked this article, we utilize search trends data for all of our clients and we invite you to learn more about our SEO services.
