Trending Thanksgiving: Introducing Insights for Search

Preparing for Thanksgiving leads to a bustle of activity in stores, homes, and online. While some are focused on searching for the perfect centerpiece idea, thousands of others begin searching for ways to express thanks through non-profit work. Their searches start weeks in advance of the holiday. Google's Insights for Search provides data on search trends across a range of time periods and geographical regions, and Google Grants recipients can leverage the trends to timely advantage.

For the past four years, search traffic on the queries 'Thanksgiving donation' and 'Thanksgiving charity' spike in the weeks approaching Thanksgiving. Even more encouraging, the query 'Thanksgiving volunteer' also spikes in traffic in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving (and has followed this pattern for years). The same is true of 'volunteer in soup kitchen.'

Particularly as Google Grants moves toward a self-service model, making use of tools to get a snapshot of search trends becomes helpful for launching successful seasonal campaigns. If your non-profit offers a Thanksgiving day event, Insights for Search can provide valuable visibility into how and when to launch campaigns. While search trends will vary from year to year on some terms, seeing the general timeframe in which traffic begins to pick up on a seasonal term can help you choose keywords and define start dates and end dates for campaigns.

Patterns in search traffic present opportunities. Using these opportunities to reach users who are searching in the non-profit space of queries can lead to a thankful response for making non-profit opportunities readily available online, and accessing a cornucopia of non-profit support.

Posted by Anita Varma, Ann Arbor AdWords Team