The latest post: Top 100 Google Searches April 2021
If you’re connected to social media or have any friends at Google, you’ll know they just recently released their:
Google Year in Search 2019 Video on YouTube
Historically, I’ve counted on this to give us some ideas for our annual study of the “top searches on the internet/google” because the focus was supposed to be what are trending or very prominent in the year. However, as we were watching this year’s video, we were somewhat questioning the point that 2019 was the “year of Heroes” as they tried to claim.
Did searches for “heroes” in 2019 truly soar?
In the video, they point out a number of search phrases:
- what kind of super heroes are there
- real life super heroes
- people with superpowers
- unsung heroes
- unlikely heroes
- sheroes
- supermom
- superdad
- super heroes that can fly
- what do heroes look like
- not all heroes wear capes
- what makes a person a hero
- can anyone be a hero
We examine the volume to see if they truly did soar. Using the first phrase and one of google’s tools (Google Trends), we see there isn’t much volume at all:
Looking at the best estimator for search volume, their keyword planner tells us it has an average of 20 searches/month throughout the world. And the graph does show it was growing, but look at the range on the left hand side: 0-30. That’s soaring?
Looking at the next few searches in the video, it looks like there’s at least more volume and we at least don’t get the “Hmm, your search doesn’t have enough data to show here.” warning message.
And keyword planner tells us there are at least relatively substantial volumes, but NOTHING close to soaring (again).
Looking at the next four (4) phrases, we get a similar picture in trends, but we found the split up within the top regions was quite interesting.
The United States and UK had a diversity of volume for each, but Singapore and Thailand appreciated the “supermom” searches, while Liberia focused on “sheroes.” The Google trends tool is quite fascinating at times.
And keyword planner shows us the volume isn’t anything to really support the claim these were “soaring” (again).
With the last batch of terms, it actually looked like the searches decreased vs. soaring.
Lastly, google KW planner stamped it on the head by showing that these phrases actually decreased. While there was the most volume with the “not all heroes wear capes” search averaging around 33,100 searches/mo, it still isn’t anywhere close to the highest volumes for the top keywords on the internet.
This video continues to show us that you can’t even rely on the horse’s mouth for keyword volume hints (or ideas). While the video was appealing and frankly the pictures and characters throughout the video may have had search volume, these phrases they place into the search box were honestly a waste of time — especially ours.
Sure, they could have been more “ideas,” but why even identify the “topics” that didn’t even have much interest?
Why? Why Google, why?
