Google have published their ‘Year in Search’, giving an insight into the trends recorded in organic search – and therefore in SEO – over the course of 2015.
In the UK, the year began with The Dress (was it blue and black, or white and gold?) along with a surge in searches relating to the Cricket World Cup – more than 300 million, in fact.
The springtime was dominated by disasters, including the downed Germanwings 9525 flight in March, and the Nepal earthquake in April, along with a disaster of a different kind for football’s governing body FIFA, rocked by corruption charges around the same time.
As summer approached, some UK-specific trends took hold, including the run-up to the General Election, and the birth of another Royal baby, Princess Charlotte, which saw over 100 million searches via Google.
Financial crises abroad dominated the headlines soon after, including China’s stock market crash in June, and Greece’s near-collapse in July, before football once again stole the spotlight, this time with the Women’s World Cup in Canada.
UK politics was back at the top of the trends in August, although this time it was not the victorious Tories, but the Labour leadership battle that people were interested in.
September had several trends fighting for the top spot, including the Queen’s milestone of becoming England’s longest-reigning monarch, Volkswagen’s emissions scandal, and another World Cup, this time in Rugby.
Climate is often in the headlines, but in October it wasn’t our own planet’s climate, but that of Mars that came under the spotlight, after scientists claimed to have confirmed the presence of water there; closer to home, the COP21 Paris Climate Conference claimed a respectable 13 million searches too.
November saw tragic events in Paris, where the terror attacks led to an unsurprisingly high figure of nearly 900 million searches – roughly double the number who searched for information about Adele’s new album released that month.
As December rolls on, Star Wars is the obvious trend, with over 150 million searches recorded by Google already.
The year as a whole shows that, when it comes to the really big searches, the old headline news topics still reign supreme, including sport, finance, politics, disasters and entertainment – making any and all of these key topics for SEO efforts into 2016 and beyond.
