Tag Archives: Trends

Google Canada’s Back-to-School Trends Report

Ahhh, summer. Time to shop for bathing suits, beach towels and… backpacks? That’s right. July is almost over and it’s already time to start shopping for school. But before they step inside a store, today’s back-to-school shoppers do their homework, heading online to find out what trends are hot, where to get them, and how to get the best deals.


And where are we getting inspiration for what to buy? A quarter of Canadian university students saying that they go to YouTube to find out what’s cool to purchase. In fact, Canadian searches for “back to school” on YouTube  grew 67% last year, and this year we’ve seen a 120% growth in watchtime of back-to-school videos globally.


It’s only July, and we’ve already seen twice as many back to school videos posted on YouTube as last year, including perennial favourites like hair tutorials and dorm room tours, along with rising trends like nail art (which we’ve already watched 2 million hours of on YouTube this year!)


So what items are likely to be on Canadians’ back-to-school shopping list? We looked at search trends year-over-year and identified three distinct patterns:


  • Rising stars - you can think of these as fast fashion trends, they’re things that get really hot quickly, but can fizzle out; we’re searching for them a lot.
  • Seasonal Growth - these are trends that last for several seasons, they have staying power; these searches are steadily increasing year-over-year.
  • Seasonal Decline - these are trends that are slowly on their way out; we’re searching less for them now than we used to.

Canada’s Back-to-School Hot (and Not) List

Happy shopping!

Posted by Jenn Kaiser, Communications Manager, Google Canada






Through the Google lens: Search trends February 6-12

Happy Valentine’s Day (and long weekend!) to all you searchers out there. Here’s a look at the past week in Google Search:

Artists in the spotlight

Around The Grammy’s last week, two artists were at the front of the search pack: Beck, who took home the Album of the Year award, and Kanye West. Kanye almost pulled a Kanye (of 2009 VMA’s fame) when he appeared on the verge of interrupting Beck’s acceptance speech; West was upset that Beck won the award over Beyonce, who (according to West) had the best album of all time.

Other top artists in search include Sia—along with Kristen Wiig, who appeared in Sia’s Grammy performance, although Sia’s face did not—and Annie Lennox, who’s still got it. Finally, searchers were struck by a sober moment during the ceremony: after domestic abuse survivor Brooke Axtell shared her personal story on stage, search interest in [domestic violence] spiked 93x.

Grammy-performances.width-1024.jpg

News in the news

Shock followed shock for news hounds this week. First, a week after Brian Williams admitted that he had wrongly claimed to have been on a helicopter that was shot down in Iraq in 2003, he was suspended for six months by NBC’s Nightly News. Now he’s at an all-time high in search. Meanwhile, Jon Stewart announced he will leave The Daily Show after 16 years, devastating loyal fans everywhere and inspiring speculation over who will replace him. And finally, we said goodbye to two legends of journalism: Bob Simon, CBS News reporter and 60 Minutes correspondent for decades, and The New York Times’ media columnist David Carr are being mourned by colleagues and readers.

Jon-Stewart.width-1600.jpg

Jackpot

Some lucky viewers got a sneak peek at the third season of Netflix drama House of Cards when new episodes were accidentally posted online. More than 50,000 searches followed as people tried to get a glimpse before they were taken down. And speaking of lucky, this week’s $500+ million Powerball jackpot had people searching like crazy in hopes of winning the big bucks. There were 2 million searches for [Powerball] on Wednesday, and more for [mega millions] and [lottery numbers]. So far, one person has come forward to claim one of the three winning tickets, so maybe you should check your pockets...

Searching for love

Valentine’s Day has people scrambling and searching for flowers and gift ideas. Interestingly, there are three times as many searches for [gifts for a boyfriend], than [gifts for a girlfriend], but when it comes to married couples things are reversed: there are more searches for [gifts for wife] than for [gifts for husband]. (We’ll just leave that there.) People turn to search for planning all kinds of Valentine’s Day activities, from “What should I wear on a first date?” to choosing a romantic movie.

Girlfriend-vs-Boyfriend.width-1024.jpg

Tip of the week

Go on, tell that special someone how you feel this weekend. The Google app can help—when your own words just aren’t good enough, say “Ok Google, show me a love quote.” Pro tip: give credit where credit is due. No one likes a plagiarist.

Through the Google lens: Search trends February 6-12

Happy Valentine’s Day (and long weekend!) to all you searchers out there. Here’s a look at the past week in Google Search:

Artists in the spotlight

Around The Grammy’s last week, two artists were at the front of the search pack: Beck, who took home the Album of the Year award, and Kanye West. Kanye almost pulled a Kanye (of 2009 VMA’s fame) when he appeared on the verge of interrupting Beck’s acceptance speech; West was upset that Beck won the award over Beyonce, who (according to West) had the best album of all time.

Other top artists in search include Sia—along with Kristen Wiig, who appeared in Sia’s Grammy performance, although Sia’s face did not—and Annie Lennox, who’s still got it. Finally, searchers were struck by a sober moment during the ceremony: after domestic abuse survivor Brooke Axtell shared her personal story on stage, search interest in [domestic violence] spiked 93x.

Grammy-performances.width-1024.jpg

News in the news

Shock followed shock for news hounds this week. First, a week after Brian Williams admitted that he had wrongly claimed to have been on a helicopter that was shot down in Iraq in 2003, he was suspended for six months by NBC’s Nightly News. Now he’s at an all-time high in search. Meanwhile, Jon Stewart announced he will leave The Daily Show after 16 years, devastating loyal fans everywhere and inspiring speculation over who will replace him. And finally, we said goodbye to two legends of journalism: Bob Simon, CBS News reporter and 60 Minutes correspondent for decades, and The New York Times’ media columnist David Carr are being mourned by colleagues and readers.

Jon-Stewart.width-1600.jpg

Jackpot

Some lucky viewers got a sneak peek at the third season of Netflix drama House of Cards when new episodes were accidentally posted online. More than 50,000 searches followed as people tried to get a glimpse before they were taken down. And speaking of lucky, this week’s $500+ million Powerball jackpot had people searching like crazy in hopes of winning the big bucks. There were 2 million searches for [Powerball] on Wednesday, and more for [mega millions] and [lottery numbers]. So far, one person has come forward to claim one of the three winning tickets, so maybe you should check your pockets...

Searching for love

Valentine’s Day has people scrambling and searching for flowers and gift ideas. Interestingly, there are three times as many searches for [gifts for a boyfriend], than [gifts for a girlfriend], but when it comes to married couples things are reversed: there are more searches for [gifts for wife] than for [gifts for husband]. (We’ll just leave that there.) People turn to search for planning all kinds of Valentine’s Day activities, from “What should I wear on a first date?” to choosing a romantic movie.

Girlfriend-vs-Boyfriend.width-1024.jpg

Tip of the week

Go on, tell that special someone how you feel this weekend. The Google app can help—when your own words just aren’t good enough, say “Ok Google, show me a love quote.” Pro tip: give credit where credit is due. No one likes a plagiarist.

Through the Google lens: Search trends February 6-12

Happy Valentine’s Day (and long weekend!) to all you searchers out there. Here’s a look at the past week in Google Search:

Artists in the spotlight

Around The Grammy’s last week, two artists were at the front of the search pack: Beck, who took home the Album of the Year award, and Kanye West. Kanye almost pulled a Kanye (of 2009 VMA’s fame) when he appeared on the verge of interrupting Beck’s acceptance speech; West was upset that Beck won the award over Beyonce, who (according to West) had the best album of all time.

Other top artists in search include Sia—along with Kristen Wiig, who appeared in Sia’s Grammy performance, although Sia’s face did not—and Annie Lennox, who’s still got it. Finally, searchers were struck by a sober moment during the ceremony: after domestic abuse survivor Brooke Axtell shared her personal story on stage, search interest in [domestic violence] spiked 93x.

Grammy-performances.width-1024.jpg

News in the news

Shock followed shock for news hounds this week. First, a week after Brian Williams admitted that he had wrongly claimed to have been on a helicopter that was shot down in Iraq in 2003, he was suspended for six months by NBC’s Nightly News. Now he’s at an all-time high in search. Meanwhile, Jon Stewart announced he will leave The Daily Show after 16 years, devastating loyal fans everywhere and inspiring speculation over who will replace him. And finally, we said goodbye to two legends of journalism: Bob Simon, CBS News reporter and 60 Minutes correspondent for decades, and The New York Times’ media columnist David Carr are being mourned by colleagues and readers.

Jon-Stewart.width-1600.jpg

Jackpot

Some lucky viewers got a sneak peek at the third season of Netflix drama House of Cards when new episodes were accidentally posted online. More than 50,000 searches followed as people tried to get a glimpse before they were taken down. And speaking of lucky, this week’s $500+ million Powerball jackpot had people searching like crazy in hopes of winning the big bucks. There were 2 million searches for [Powerball] on Wednesday, and more for [mega millions] and [lottery numbers]. So far, one person has come forward to claim one of the three winning tickets, so maybe you should check your pockets...

Searching for love

Valentine’s Day has people scrambling and searching for flowers and gift ideas. Interestingly, there are three times as many searches for [gifts for a boyfriend], than [gifts for a girlfriend], but when it comes to married couples things are reversed: there are more searches for [gifts for wife] than for [gifts for husband]. (We’ll just leave that there.) People turn to search for planning all kinds of Valentine’s Day activities, from “What should I wear on a first date?” to choosing a romantic movie.

Girlfriend-vs-Boyfriend.width-1024.jpg

Tip of the week

Go on, tell that special someone how you feel this weekend. The Google app can help—when your own words just aren’t good enough, say “Ok Google, show me a love quote.” Pro tip: give credit where credit is due. No one likes a plagiarist.

Ok Google, how do I vote?

On November 4, Americans will cast ballots for 435 members of congress, 36 senators, 39 governorships, and thousands of other races locally. While every election is important, the voting process can often feel complicated, with the information about how to head to the polls spread across multiple official sources.

Get ready to vote with Google.

That’s why we are launching a number of new tools to equip voters with the information they need to vote on the issues they care about this November.  What is my registration deadline? How do I vote? What forms of identification do I need? All a voter needs to do is ask Google.

For the first time ever, a simple search for [how do i vote] or [register to vote] will give you all the information you need - personalized by state - to vote in person, vote by mail, and make sure you are registered to vote.

Voters can even get reminders on key election information straight from the Google App.

What’s trending this election season?

As election day approaches, YouTube.com/Elections and Google.com/Elections will provide real-time feeds for all the latest news and analysis, live candidate debates, and trending videos on the key races and top issues from across the country.

tablet_elections.jpg      yt_elections_android.jpg

By visiting Google.com/+GooglePolitics voters can see all Google Trends infographics -- a pulse on what Americans are searching in the final 26 days of the election.

           
Google Search and the Google Politics & Elections teams are working to make things simpler, by bringing technology to the elections process to encourage transparency, engagement, and informed participation.  With so much at stake on November 4th, including the balance of power in Congress, it is crucial that voters have access to all the information they needed to exercise their power to vote at the polls.

Make sure to check back over the coming weeks, as we’ll continue to release new tools to make sure all Americans can discover and connect with our democratic process.

Be informed. Spread the word. Get ready to use your power.

Posted by Anthea Watson Strong, Elections & Civic Engagement Program Manager