In our continuing series of examining Google Search Trends to gain insights into the top keywords queried in the USA, we present our findings for November 2019. 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+. 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. Whoa – Some Non-Google Doodle Related Phrases Made It To The Top Within the last two months, the top searched terms were related to Google Doodles online. These queries were initiated by users clicking on the updated Google logo, which brought the user to Google’s search result page about the subject of the Doodle. In November, we saw some actual inputted user queries make the 10 Million mark: Day of the Dead - Nov. 1st - 10 Million+ queries History of Thanksgiving - Nov. 27th - 10 Million+ queries Walmart - Nov. 27th - 10 Million+ queries The first query above was generated by Google Doodle clicks The other two appear to be honest-to-goodness user queries. The Google Doodle for Thanksgiving day led to a query of Thanksgiving 2019, so people really did want to know more about the history of the holiday. With the gift buying season starting at the end of November, we saw a number of different retailer brands entering the top searched queries of the month. Walmart led them all and was the only retailer brand that had more than 10 million queries. People Still Love Searching For Sports Over half of the 90 phrases we collected in November were sports-related. While the NFL was the most popular subject with 23 of those phrases, the top spot for most popular sports-related queries was for college football. For two days straight, the same phrase was queried most frequently: 11/8//2019 - LSU vs Alabama - 5,000,000+ 11/9/2019 - LSU vs Alabama - 5,000,000+ This college football rivalry has been going on for many years and this year, LSU won for the first time since 2011. The Tigers’ win may have been the reason there was an additional spike in query volume for the game. Other Top Queries By Category As we record queries, we categorize them by subject matter. Here are some of the top phrases by category: Entertainment The phrase related to Entertainment that had the largest query volume for the month of November was used by people looking for the latest video streaming platform: 11/11/2019 - Disney Plus - 5,000,000+ Technology The biggest technology-related query was driven by users seeking information about an electric powered vehicle: 11/21/2019 - Tesla Truck - 2,000,000+ Politics With a contested election, an Impeachment inquiry, and a presidential campaign heating up, there was a three-way tie for the top political queries in November: 11/5/2019 - Kentucky governor race - 2,000,000+ 11/19/2019 - Quid pro quo - 2,000,000+ 11/20/2019 - Democratic debate - 2,000,000+ Holiday Shopping Drives Queries Lastly, we saw a huge jump in the Shopping query category during the month of November. As previously mentioned, Walmart was the biggest phrase in this category. Here is the list of the other queries that made the top three of their specific dates: 11/14/2019 - Walmart Black Friday - 1,000,000+ 11/18/2019 - Walmart Black Friday 2019 Ad - 200,000+ 11/28/2019 - Best Buy - 2,000,000+ 11/29/2019 - H&M - 500,000+ 11/30/2019 - Cyber Monday 2019 - 2,000,000+ The most notable aspect of this list is the use of retail brand names as queries. These retailers either had strong promotions for their holiday sales, or their sales spoke for themselves and drove search interest by word of mouth. In any case, it’s clear from the search volume that people are still interested in shopping at traditional retailers for the holidays. As the holiday shopping season progresses, AMP will keep an eye on search query trends for our clients to inform our campaigns during this busy season. See you next month!

Two of my favorite things, outside of my wife and daughter (of course), are 1) beer and 2) creating content from high volume keywords. I can hear you saying, “Really, Greg?” and I would say, “Yes, really.” So, what a better blog topic that combines these two and gives some tips for creating content that people actually want to read? You might have guessed, but I’m a beer snob. I used to be ashamed to admit that because I hate being trendy, but I can’t hide the fact that 2017 is the height of craft beer mania. Check out how the term “craft beer” has trended since 2004 according to Google Trends. Craft beer may as well be Taylor Swift, pointy fake nails, Herschel bags, or one of those undercut haircuts with a tiny ponytail on top.* *For the record, I’m currently drinking a Lamplighter Stardust IPA brewed with Simcoe, Summit, and Amarillo hops. I love Lamplighter Brewing Company in Cambridge, Massachusetts (Lamplighter employees: Hit me up to coordinate my free cases). Cool chart, huh? It's free courtesy of the Googs' Trend tool. You can get a graph on anything you want there. Let’s imagine I came up with the really unoriginal idea to start a beer blog. For the sake of this blog, let’s assume I want to be a source of education for beer newbies. So, where do I start? I can hear you saying, “Greg, it must be really overwhelming to figure out what to write about, right?” And I would say, “Wrong.” With the right (mostly free tools) and a little bit of SEO know-how, you can figure out exactly what you should be writing about and how to drive traffic to your site over time. The best part is - it’s all based on real data and what people really want. I bet a lot of beer newbies see a porter and a stout as being similar. Looking at Google Keyword Planner, we can see that “porter vs stout” gets 5400 searches per month. BAM! I’ve written my first article entitled “What is the Difference Between and Porter and a Stout?” For those of you who aren’t aware, Google Keyword Planner is linked to an existing Adwords account. If an Adwords account doesn’t exist, there’s a great free keyword research tool through “The Hoth.” When should I write this article? In the chart below, it looks like search interest around the term “stout” peaks in the cool/cold weather months - not surprising since a stout is a hearty beer. It’s also not a surprise that searches peak around St. Patrick’s Day. Guinness is a stout and it’s one of the most famous Irish beers. With this knowledge, I’ll likely publish my article in the fall, and then maybe I’ll do another feature on stouts around St. Patrick’s Day. BAM! Who am I? Emeril Lagasse? Punch me… Ok, so now my mind is working. What about summer beers? I see a lot of people drinking shandy-style beers in the summer. Since I actually have no idea what a shandy is, I’m going to Google “shandy” now. Based on Google’s “Auto Complete,” many other people have the same curiosity as I do: Based on this tip, I confirm that many people are curious to know what a shandy is. After doing some keyword research, I see that 1600 people per month type in the exact query “what is a shandy?” Sweet. Check out the shandy search trends below. There’s no surprise that queries around “shandy” peak in the summer since it is a light, fruity, and refreshing beer. Search data is great and all, but what is actually resonating with the public? What have people been sharing over the past year? Using BuzzSumo (which just got acquired by Brandwatch), we can see the most shared content pieces pertaining to a given topic over a preselected period of time. I love using this tool to understand the types of content that actually resonates with the public. Check out the results below for the query “craft beer.” An article entitled “IPAs Are Giving You Man Boobs” was shared over 93K times. This list has some great inspirations for fun and lifestyle content that I can add to my blog. Most importantly, I’m currently rubbing my chest and thinking that I might need to go to the gym. TLDR: Use keyword data to discover and create awesome content. Google Trends to see popular searches Google Keyword Planner to see the volume of searches for particular keywords BuzzSumo to see what’s being shared in social

I recently had the opportunity to attend a presentation by Qi Lu, President of Microsoft's Online Services Division and got to hear his views on what the future holds for the web and search. The presentation was really interesting and actually put me in awe of how much possibility there is. Here are some of the innovations that the web has had and will see in the future: Keywords ' search engines primarily ran on these in the beginning to gather search results Geo-targeting ' implemented to help the user find more location relevant search results Apps ' helped bring the web's information to user's on-the-go Social ' developed to connect you with your friends. Implementing this into search engines is the next step for Microsoft and by teaming up with Facebook, this gives them a huge advantage Task Completion ' another soon to be new frontier in the world of search engines. For example, right now searching 'dinner for two, movie after'? will not generate relevant results for what you want. But in a smarter web with task completion, you will yield results for restaurants and movies nearby, both with reviews or ratings from people you know, location information, as well as maybe an ad for cabs to take you from the restaurant to the movies, all in one search With all of these innovations, one person mentioned the printing press and how the invention of it indirectly cheap cialis sparked the Enlightenment. So with a smarter web that is even more accessible to everyone, what does this mean for humanity? Lu's take on it is that an increased interconnectivity of the world is going to bring people much closer together and that the idea of community will be radically transformed, as well as what constitutes a civil behavior. Also with a more streamlined and smarter web, one wonders how advertising will change and if it will even still be relevant to us anymore. Lu believes advertising is here to stay and with good reason. If there was no advertising then there would be no information to search for. Advertising is what informs us of new information regarding certain products or services that we would otherwise not know about. However, the portal in which that information is delivered is and will constantly change. This is why startups like Groupon have reached an unprecedented amount of success in today's market. Now more than ever, Lu believes startups have a huge opportunity to help shape the web's future. Web innovation is all about making the most out of everything the web has to offer. Streamlining it into your day-to-day life is what successful innovation is made of. Innovators eventually want to reach a point where the web can read your mind and your intent so well that it will be able to generate relevant results, as well as ads. It seems that a psychic internet may be a long way away but only because there is still much left to be discovered.

I recently had the opportunity to attend a presentation by Qi Lu, President of Microsoft's Online Services Division and got to hear his views on what the future holds for the web and search. The presentation was really interesting and actually put me in awe of how much possibility there is. Here are some of the innovations that the web has had and will see in the future: Keywords ' search engines primarily ran on these in the beginning to gather search results Geo-targeting ' implemented to help the user find more location relevant search results Apps ' helped bring the web's information to user's on-the-go Social ' developed to connect you with your friends. Implementing this into search engines is the next step for Microsoft and by teaming up with Facebook, this gives them a huge advantage Task Completion ' another soon to be new frontier in the world of search engines. For example, right now searching 'dinner for two, movie after'? will not generate relevant results for what you want. But in a smarter web with task completion, you will yield results for restaurants and movies nearby, both with reviews or ratings from people you know, location information, as well as maybe an ad for cabs to take you from the restaurant to the movies, all in one search With all of these innovations, one person mentioned the printing press and how the invention of it indirectly cheap cialis sparked the Enlightenment. So with a smarter web that is even more accessible to everyone, what does this mean for humanity? Lu's take on it is that an increased interconnectivity of the world is going to bring people much closer together and that the idea of community will be radically transformed, as well as what constitutes a civil behavior. Also with a more streamlined and smarter web, one wonders how advertising will change and if it will even still be relevant to us anymore. Lu believes advertising is here to stay and with good reason. If there was no advertising then there would be no information to search for. Advertising is what informs us of new information regarding certain products or services that we would otherwise not know about. However, the portal in which that information is delivered is and will constantly change. This is why startups like Groupon have reached an unprecedented amount of success in today's market. Now more than ever, Lu believes startups have a huge opportunity to help shape the web's future. Web innovation is all about making the most out of everything the web has to offer. Streamlining it into your day-to-day life is what successful innovation is made of. Innovators eventually want to reach a point where the web can read your mind and your intent so well that it will be able to generate relevant results, as well as ads. It seems that a psychic internet may be a long way away but only because there is still much left to be discovered.