Page 33 - Decoding Decisions ~ Making sense of the messy middle

33 CHAPTER 3 INVESTIGATING THE MESSY MIDDLE

It is likely that searches containing “ideas” will often follow on quickly from
one or more triggers, such as a pressing need to identify and buy a gift for
somebody. While “Christmas gift ideas” is the largest phrase by volume, as
seen in figure 5, we also turn to Google to help us with birthday gift ideas
(a fairly flat pattern given birthdays occur all year round) and anniversary gift
ideas (on close inspection peaking in May-September each year, aligned with
the fact more couples in the UK marry in summer months than in winter). 8

Figure 5

christmas gift ideas birthday gift ideas anniversary gift ideas
Search term Search term Search term

100

75
SEARCH INTEREST 50

25

0
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
Popular UK search queries containing “gift ideas”.

8 UK Office of National Statistics, https://www.ons.gov.uk/visualisations/dvc360/index.html
Data source: Google Trends, United Kingdom, 1st January 2011–1st January 2020, All categories, Web Search