The other day Google posted a blog post named the latest local shopping trends; local is now digital. In this blog post, Google shared a lot of trends the company tracked with local searches in 2020 due to COVID-19.
Here are some of those data points in bullet format below:
- Searches for “local” + “business(es)” have grown by more than 80% year over year, including searches like “local businesses near me” and “support local businesses.”
- Searches for “who has” + “in stock” have grown by more than 8,000% year over, including searches like “who has nintendo switch in stock” and “who has gym equipment in stock.”
- Two out of three dining consumers said they used search to find food and beverage information during the pandemic.
- Fifty-seven percent of dining consumers said they discovered food and beverage information during the pandemic via online ads.
- Forty-five percent of viewers say they watch YouTube to see a product demo before buying.
- Viewers say they are 2x more likely to go in-store or online to buy something they saw on YouTube versus the competitive average.
- Searches on Google Maps for “curbside pickup” have increased nearly 9000% year over year in the U.S.
- Searches on Google Maps for “discounts” have grown globally by more than 100% year over year.
- Searches on Google Maps for “gift shop” have grown globally by more than 60% year over year.
What a year 2020 was but the vaccines are rolling out – hopefully – hopefully – we will see a lot of changes to searcher behavior in the upcoming months.
Forum discussion at Twitter.