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Sunday, June 27, 2010

Search Popularity

You won't be surprised to hear that Google searches on 'mechanical pencil' and 'mechanical pencils' are one of the main sources of traffic to this blog. I've noticed some traffic declines lately so started doing a bit of investigation. From Google Trends, heres the popularity of those Google searches over time.

Firstly the search term 'mechanical pencil'.


Now with an s on the end, 'mechanical pencils'.

Look at that wave, a constant pattern of mid year lows and year end highs. Northern hemisphere school holidays? Summer means less time phaffing around on the net in general?

For comparison here's some other related searches.

'Pencil'

'Pencils'

'Pentel'


'Staedtler'


and oh dear, this doesn't look good for 'Rotring'
at

8 comments:

  1. frou-frouSunday, 27 June, 2010

    Hi I love reading the stats from my site and where people come from and how they reach me.

    Do you find that you get people reach you from google searches that seem completely unrelated?

    I really enjoy your site and it feeds my obsession nicely. Keep up the good work, Fiona

    ReplyDelete
  2. Kiwi-dSunday, 27 June, 2010

    Hi Fiona. I too take quite an interest in my site stats, visitor origins, etc. There certainly are some unusual searches that find this blog, and some related yet unrelated ones. For instance my passing mention and image of 'pencil skirt' seems to rank well and gets it fair share of hits. Combine that with my posting on the Pierre Cardin pen set and many fasionable ladies find this blog :-) And its not really what they are looking for!

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousSunday, 27 June, 2010

    Strange. It seems that every one of these terms except for "pencil" is steadily decreasing in popularity.

    ReplyDelete
  4. JamesSunday, 27 June, 2010

    It's all OK, pens are declining in popularity too!

    http://www.google.com/trends?q=pens,+pencils,+stationery&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

    I wonder what causes that big peak/trough each end of year. I bet the stationery marketing departments know.

    It's hard to pick much from the results. Is this the relative search volume of these terms to all other terms? If that's the case then the increase in popularity of using the internet for... 'pointless' things might naturally cause a decline.

    Or maybe it reflects a general drop in stationery interest. Maybe due to the increasing prevalence of technology. Like sending an email instead of passing a post it note, or using an iPhone/Smartphone instead of a diary.

    Just some thoughts...

    ReplyDelete
  5. Kiwi-dSunday, 27 June, 2010

    Hi James
    Good points. I am pretty sure the search volume is relative to itself, rather than to total search volume of all searches. That bif November spike is really obvious in the pens search - maybe Christmas presents?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Time WasterSunday, 27 June, 2010

    I noticed last year or two years ago when I bought all those Pentel Kerrys that your site was the 1st to come up on google it still comes up first just after the 4 sale ads.

    ReplyDelete
  7. LexxTuesday, 29 June, 2010

    Interesting, some "marketboy" could rly use this graphcs for some market strategy.

    ReplyDelete
  8. GermFriday, 16 July, 2010

    very interesting

    ReplyDelete