Page 39 - Decoding Decisions ~ Making sense of the messy middle
P. 39
39 CHAPTER 3 INVESTIGATING THE MESSY MIDDLE
And as we saw earlier, with “best” sometimes occupying an exploratory
function when used alongside a generic search term, these two modifiers
capture both sides of the exploration and evaluation loop.
On the one hand, we perform exploratory searches to determine the most
appealing destinations, eateries, and activities. For example, the upward
trends we noted for “best places”, “best beaches”, “best hotels in”, and “best
things to do”.
On the other hand, we appear determined to pay as little as possible for our
transport to get there and our accommodation once we arrive, frequently
modifying our travel searches with “cheap” (albeit with “cheap” featuring in a
decreasing proportion of travel searches over time, figure 13).
Figure 13
cheap flights cheap holidays cheap hotels cheap train tickets cheap all inclusive
Search term Search term Search term Search term Search term
100
75
SEARCH INTEREST 50
25
0
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
The term “cheap” appears in a range of popular searches in the travel category in the UK.
It’s notable that travel searches including “cheap” rarely contain the names
of brands. While it might be tempting to assume that “cheap” searches are
purely evaluative, the absence of brands shows us that these might often
also be exploratory.
Data source: Google Trends, United Kingdom, 1st January 2011–1st January 2020, Travel category, Web Search
