The Untapped Potential Of Search Data

Search behaviour is a “digital truth serum” that can profoundly enhance consumer understanding. Despite the widespread use of search in everyday life, the full potential of search data remains largely untapped. Insights teams have a unique opportunity to harness the power of search data by integrating it strategically into their research projects.

Organisations are increasingly embracing external data sources, integrating them with internal data to delve deeper into consumer behaviour. While social media still attracts the most attention for insights, other digital sources offer distinct perspectives into consumer mindsets. By venturing beyond social listening and into comprehensive digital research, brands can generate richer insights and construct a holistic consumer profile.

Search data holds immense, untapped potential as an insights source. Consider the omnipresence of search engines in our daily routines—they serve as our first stop for information, providing instant answers in our hyperconnected world. Nowadays, we can satisfy our curiosity almost anytime, anywhere. Search has woven its way into the fabric of our everyday lives and is near universal among the online population, spanning all generations. Although the tools we use to search have changed over time, the fundamental motivations driving searches are the same. Each query typed into the search bar represents a window into consumer desires and intentions. Yet, despite the clear value of this digital footprint, search data remains underutilised for insights beyond marketing purposes.

Current usage of search data is primarily confined to search marketing, such as keyword research for PPC and SEO optimisation. Tools like Google Trends offer surface-level insights into trending topics but fall short of revealing underlying drivers or nuanced behaviours.

Search data possesses four key properties that make it a powerful source for consumer insights:

1. Big

   With the barrier to making a search being relatively lower than most other kinds of digital activity, billions of searches are made globally each day. This means search can provide unparalleled insight to the size and trend of unprompted consumer interest for a given topic.

2. Honest

   Users search in private. There is no reason for people to hold back or exaggerate, meaning search provides unbiased glimpses into genuine consumer needs and preferences.

3. Specific

   Search queries are highly tailored, with people being incentivised to be specific to get relevant results. This translates into granular insights, even at a product-level detail. This property, in combination with the sheer volume of searches, enables robust, always-on tracking of topics that are relevant to specific use cases, such as the launch of a new SKU by a competitor.

4. Attributable

   Search data can be localised, revealing geographic nuances in consumer behaviour across counties, states and even cities.

While search provides deep insight into consumer interests and needs, it doesn’t paint a complete behavioural picture. It lacks specific demographic information due to anonymisation and is weaker in conveying emotion or opinion compared to social data. Therefore, a balanced approach combining search with other sources is essential for comprehensive consumer understanding.

Different industries experience varied search behaviours. For instance, search plays a more significant role in product discovery for shopping items, such as beauty and fashion, than for convenience products, especially those that are highly impulse-driven. That’s not to say search data can’t unlock insights for these categories, but rather the business questions that search feeds into will be different.

At the most fundamental level, the volume and growth of searches can provide a robust indication of the level of consumer interest and trend. However, the true power of search is unlocked by looking at the types of searches people make and classifying these in meaningful ways.

Different frameworks can be applied to classifying searches, which is a practical starting point for unearthing insights. A commonly used concept in the world of SEO involves looking at intent, which is the ‘why’ behind a search query. This is used by search marketers to help them develop content to be visible in the moments that matter, but it can also be incredibly powerful for driving understanding of consumer needs and wants.

Another framework involves classifying searches as Affinity, Category or Branded. Affinity searches are those related to a specific need or problem, but without an identified solution, for example ‘How to relax before bed’ or ‘Dry skin in winter’. This can be a powerful way to reveal unmet needs and identify whitespace opportunities. Other approaches include categorising searches by topic (for example, Formats, Brands, Flavours), theme (for example, Reviews, Price, Safety), marketing funnel stage, or question type. These different views of data can provide insight to help answer a range of business questions.

To harness the full potential of search data, insights teams can leverage it across various strategic use cases. Here are some examples of how an insights team within a CPG company could use search data:

1. Category Understanding

   Drive deeper understanding of categories from a consumer perspective through honest insights into what consumers really need and look for from a category. Identify consumer pain points and surface macro shifts in consumer behaviour to futureproof portfolios.

2. Consumer Needs & Behaviour

   Search is fundamentally about asking questions and resolving needs. People have no incentive to lie when searching, as they might in surveys or interviews. This makes search a powerful source for sizing consumer needs and uncovering drivers, moments & occasions, and other associations, such as which products are top of mind for addressing a specific need.

3. Brand & Product Performance

   Monitor and benchmark consumer interest at a brand and product level to spot issues and opportunities at an early stage. Search data is a proven leading indicator of important brand outcomes, such as sales and market share, providing early signals on brand health.

4. Competitive Landscape Tracking

   With the explosion of small brands, it has never been more important for CPGs to track the changing competitive landscape. Search is the best digital source for identifying emerging brands and monitoring consumer interest in competitors. Unlike social listening, search data can provide ongoing visibility into the entire competitive landscape, enabling companies identify future disruptor brands for M&A and Corporate Venturing.

5. Trends Discovery & Monitoring

   Trends is the most common use case for search data, owing to the characteristics of the source and long-term time-series lens. With the right methods and tools, search can be used for more than just spotting the “next big thing” to deliver deeper insights and unlock the true potential of a trend, whether for NPD, portfolio optimisation, or informing messaging.

Search data offers unparalleled potential for insights because of its unique properties – it’s big, honest, specific and attributable. Insights teams should integrate search strategically into their research methodologies, viewing it as an integral piece of the puzzle for driving deeper consumer understanding. They should consider how to integrate search with their most strategic use cases and partner with other business functions to identify how search can unlock new opportunities, such as target scouting for M&A and Corporate Venturing.

Our team is pioneering new ways to use search data and has experience leveraging search across a range of contexts – working with organisations across industries and partnering with stakeholders from different business functions including Insights, R&D, Quality and CVC. Beyond a strong understanding of when to use search and how it complements other data sources, we have developed proprietary methods and bespoke NLP accelerators to get the most out of search data. Defining the role of search and identifying the different perspectives required on the data is just the start; expertise in gathering, transforming and analysing search data across platforms and geographies is essential to realise the full potential of search for insights.