Page 30 - Decoding Decisions ~ Making sense of the messy middle

30 CHAPTER 3 INVESTIGATING THE MESSY MIDDLE

The lesson of ‘free’ – a warning to the curious

This isn’t to say that “free” no longer features in searches today. It still

represents significant volume, but the types of free things we are looking
for have evolved, and the composition of search queries containing “free”
helps us to understand that evolution. For example, if we limit our analysis
to the food and drink category, we see that when people use the word “free”
in a search they tend to be looking for items that are “free from” a specific
ingredient or allergen (figure 3).

Figure 3

free gluten free sugar free dairy free meat free
Search term Search term Search term Search term Search term

100

75
SEARCH INTEREST 50

25

0
2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 2020
Rising UK search interest for the term “free” in the food and drink category.

The demise of “free” and the category-specific details that add nuance to

that narrative, serve as a cautionary tale for the rest of this chapter. As we
look at other search modifiers, in each case we have to bear in mind that the
same word can have different meanings in different categories, countries,
and languages.

Data source: Google Trends, United Kingdom, 1st January 2004–1st January 2020, Food & Drink category, Web Search