You may not have been as unique as you thought when planning that unicorn surprise party last year…[/caption] Learning what people want to know is the best way to predict how they’re thinking and what their needs and interests will be in the future. Obviously, this is invaluable intel for marketers. The Association for Internet Research Specialists combed through some of Google’s search terms from the past year to analyze word combinations and derive certain recurring fads. Here are a few of the results — and some takeaways for marketing in 2018: Unicorns You don’t have to go to Etsy or Pinterest to know that unicorns captured everyone’s imaginations in 2017. From unicorn cakes and other party decor to the Starbucks Unicorn Frappuccino that might as well have been as elusive as the mythical creatures themselves, since it kept selling out everywhere, the rainbows and hooves and horns were ubiquitous. Recipes dominated search requests, along with queries about calories — go figure. This should tell marketers that people can take anything fun and ruin it with dieting (just kidding!). Slime It may sound like a total throwback to the 1990s and Nickelodeon game shows, but kids really are into slime again! Searches included shopping for slime, but especially recipes for making slime at home. As AIRS tells us, those searches were followed closely behind — unsurprisingly — by phrases seeking ways to clean slime and get slime out of carpets. Hey, at least it’s better than too much screen time, right parents? That’s one takeaway from this high-ranking search term. Parents will go to great lengths to entertain their kids the old-fashioned way. Celebrity Animals Move over, Gunner Stone and Bella Raine. (Yes, those are real famous babies that were born last year!) Celebrity kids and their silly names are not what we’re into anymore. In 2017, it was all about celebrity pets and other famous animals. Beyond cat videos and stories about different kinds of animals becoming best friends, there’s a market for the crossover between our obsession with famous people and our obsession with the animal kingdom. It should come as no surprise that there’s plenty of overlap on the Internet.
What Does It Mean?
Of course, sometimes people hop on Google simply to look something up (especially when they’re too shy to ask somebody out loud). The funniest example might just be acronyms — because you can just imagine someone getting a text and not wanting to look “uncool” and ask the sender what it means, so they Google it instead. Here are the top-searched acronyms in 2017, according to AIRS:-
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- WCW (woman crush Wednesday)
- TFW (that feeling when)
- GOAT (greatest of all time)
- OFC (of course)
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