Page 40 - Decoding Decisions ~ Making sense of the messy middle

40 CHAPTER 3 INVESTIGATING THE MESSY MIDDLE

OK Google, show me the bargains

Three modifiers used in similar categories and for similar purposes are

“deals”, “offers”, and “sale”.

“Deals” is especially common in the internet and telecom sector. We use this
modifier to seek value when both exploring and evaluating broadband, phone
contracts, and TV subscriptions (figure 14).

Figure 14

broadband deals sim only deals tv deals
Search term Search term Search term

100

75
SEARCH INTEREST 50

25

0
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
A rising proportion of UK searches in the internet and telecoms category contains the term “deals”.

It’s much harder to broadly characterise searches containing “deals” as
explore or evaluate based on the presence of brands. Both are commonly
used with and without brand names, implying that people are looking
expansively for information and new brands, as well as critically evaluating
the deals on offer from the brands they are considering.

Data source: Google Trends, United Kingdom, 1st January 2011–1st January 2020, Internet & Telecom category, Web Search