At a time when retailers need every sale they can get, the eCommerce world went into Black Friday with predictions indicating a potential Black Friday slowdown with key contributory factors of inflation and World Cup football. Interestingly, a report created by Sensormatic indicated that in-person shopping increased by 2.9% compared to 2021.
However, purely in the search space – are less people interested in Black Friday – and can we see that in Google’s search / search trend data?
Across the world, the volume of search behind the phrase ‘Black Friday’ has continued to decline between 2020 to 2022, following its peak in 2019. The hype and frenzy seen between 2014 to 2018 is now showing signs of a slowdown.
In terms of Google Ads data, the peak (worldwide) for ‘Black Friday’ was in 2019 with under 50m monthly searches.
Here in the UK, we are seeing a similar picture, with Google UK search volumes plateauing in 2020-2021:
In the U.S., large eCommerce players are expected to participate and perhaps it is that expectation that makes consumers less likely to search ‘Black Friday’ and more likely to go to their favourite e-tailers to get a discount. The retail giant ‘Walmart’ are seeing diminishing search volumes for ‘Walmart Black Friday’:
The second biggest American brand for Black Friday, according to Google Trends is Target, which has seen the same trend as Walmart over the past 5 years:
In the UK, ‘Argos Black Friday’ follows the same pattern:
As does the search phrase ‘Currys Black Friday’:
Summary
Black Friday campaigns in coming years can still pack a punch; much like any other seasonal promotions. Consumers will move on to other things to obsess over, with the knowledge that retailers will continue to push out deals on Black Friday. The Black Friday sales are now taken for granted and this could well be illustrated in coming years by a further decline in Google search volumes.
Duncan Colman
