Global Internet information provider comScore released some fascinating data at the end of February regarding America’s search behavior and the financial crisis. The survey research showed an increase in people searching for terms related to the economic crisis over the past year.

The search term “unemployment” was up 206 percent to 8.2 million searches during the past year, along with “unemployment benefits,” up 247 percent to 748,000 searches. Other terms related to the economic crisis that were up:

• “Mortgage”: Up 72 percent; 7.8 million searches
• “Bankruptcy”: Up 156 percent; 2.6 million searches
• “Foreclosure”: Up 67 percent; 1.4 million searches
• “Coupons”: Up 161 percent; 19.9 million searches
• “Discount”: Up 26 percent; 7.9 million searches

Something else comScore’s research showed was that those who were searching for “unemployment” were generally younger, with the head of the household being 35 years old or younger and the household earning less than $50,000 per year. ComScore also found that these searchers were much more likely to use Ask.com, MSN and Yahoo! rather than Google or AOL Search.

ComScore’s research shows that, obviously, what people are searching for reflects Americans’ concerns and interests. Though the effects of the current financial crisis are apparent without looking at data like this, it’s interesting to see how clearly a nation’s worries are illustrated just by looking at general keywords in search trends.

What can we learn from looking at the search trends of large groups of people and taking into consideration their concerns and interests? If trends show that certain general keywords are being searched for a lot more now than they were just a year ago, that says a lot. Paying attention to trends like this can certainly be an essential part of successful search marketing as well as marketing in general.

Tags: search engine optimization, Search Marketing, search results, search trends, search trends and the economy, search trends and the financial crisis, searching, us financial crisis

This entry was posted on April 6th, 2009 by Brian and is filed under search trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.