Page 35 - Decoding Decisions ~ Making sense of the messy middle

35 CHAPTER 3 INVESTIGATING THE MESSY MIDDLE

An interesting feature of searches containing “ideas” is that, compared with
other modifiers, the term they appear alongside is rarely the name of a brand
or retailer. In 2019, less than 5% of UK searches for gift ideas, meal ideas, and
room ideas also contained the name of a brand or retailer. This supports the
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hypothesis that “ideas” searches are associated with an exploration mindset
– people are adding information, products, and brands into their thinking, not
evaluating between a shortlist of known products, brands, and retailers.

‘Ideas’ searches are associated

with an exploration mindset.

OK Google, what’s best?

Of all our seven modifiers, “best” has the widest footprint across categories.

People use “best” as a modifier in searches for everything from ironing
boards to insurance, from TV sets to travel destinations.

Since we’ve already spent some time thinking about “best” in earlier sections,
we won’t repeat those lessons here. However, there’s one further insight
worth bearing in mind: it can be challenging to definitively label “best” as a
signifier of exploration or evaluation. At first we might assume it to be strictly
evaluative – after all, to ask what’s “best” implies a side-by-side comparison.

But on closer inspection, it turns out that “best” is also being used to explore
categories in conjunction with more generic search terms.

People use ‘best’ as a modifier

in searches for everything from

ironing boards to insurance, from

TV sets to travel destinations.

9 Google internal data, UK, 2019