As you could have guessed, the staples of outdoor cookouts topped the list. Chicken, ribs, pork and BBQ sauces are first to sear atop those red hot bricks of charcoal. Unfortunately for our vegetarians, no specific mentions of vegetable recipes made our list. While our top search of ‘BBQ Recipes’ must surely include some non-meat alternatives, it’s safe to say Babe and his compatriots might not enjoy this season as much as the rest of us.
 
If your curiosity for the Q hasn’t been satisfied, let’s take a look at some more interesting items that made our research.

• Graveyard BBQ, 53 daily searches
• Apparently, a dirtcore band featured in the first release of Guitar Hero.
• Dinosaur BBQ, 17
• A hard edged American restaurant chain accompanied by “genuine houserockin’, footstompin’ music…” at least according to their website. Serving up T-Rex sized portions.
• Aussie BBQ, 13
• Australians’ are not to be outdone when skewering wild game ala Crocodile Dundee
• Jack Daniels BBQ, 10
• Ribs infused with Tennessee whiskey can only enhance Saturday afternoons.

Epiar is an Edmonton-based internet market research and search engine optimization company. Please contact us for more information or to commission your own research reports.

Early estimates indicate that, while Ron Paul and Hillary Clinton share a similar number of daily online searches, the amount of money they have spent differs wildly. Big spenders Mitt Romney and Barack Obama have yet to capture the curiousity of online citizens despite already spending tens of millions of dollars. Alternately, small spenders Mike Huckabee and Dennis Kucinich have disproportionately high levels of public interest compared to their undersized budgets. Perhaps the over-achieving campaigns of Huckabee, Kucinich, and Paul are a good early indicator of identifying this election's most potent dark horse candidates?

While charting the online searches for a candidate may not be the most important metric for predicting the outcome of the 2008 Presidential election, I sure would not be happy if my campaign showed an imbalanced ROI like Romney, McCain, or Giuliani!

Epiar is an Edmonton-based internet market research and search engine optimization company. Please contact us for more information or to commission your own research reports.

Perhaps to improve their beach appeal, people are searching for “South Beach Diet” and “Atkins Diet” over 2000 times each per day. Still, “Diet Pills” remain today’s most popular online diet topic, with over 2800 searches per day for those easy-to-swallow exercise replacements. Additional diets I'd rather not try (but apparently others do) include the “Mediterranean Diet”, the “Mayo Clinic Diet”, and the “Grapefruit Diet”.

While the effectiveness of fad diets are doubted by many, few would question the unhealthiness of several diets that did not make the top 10 list: “Chocolate Diet” (28 searches per day), “Water Diet” (59), “Barf Diet” (81), and “Crash Diets” (44). 

To see a sampling of the raw phrases used to create this list, check out these fad diet search phrases.

Epiar is an Edmonton-based internet market research and search engine optimization company. Please contact us for more information or to commission your own research reports.

These phrases are bizarre enough on their own, but what really makes me shake my head and wonder is imagining the situations these poor, unfortunate, confused people must find themselves in the first place…

Bizarre Phrases that People Actually Type into Search Engines:

• My english teacher lost my essay (searched 18 times per day)
• Whole body donation (22)
• Shaving horse (27)
• Cow seeds (6)
• Underground soil (3)
• Natural dog (64)
• Husband doesn’t shower or wear deodorant (5)
• My husband wears my clothes (10)
• Why is my husband a jerk (6)
• How to flirt (179)
• Why is my honda goldwing to hard to push (15)
• Holiday meal with no teeth (4)

Epiar Inc. is an Edmonton-based internet market research and search engine optimization company. Please contact us for more information or to commission your own research reports.

What are searchers looking for in relation to summer? Are they searching for classic summer cocktails or studiously inquiring about summer school classes?

It's turns out that searchers are doing neither. Looking at the Epiar market search data, we see mainly pop culture references float into the top 10: Justin Timberlake's song 'Summer Love', 'Summer Fashion' & 'Summer Dresses', the song 'Summer Nights' from Grease, the singer/ songwriter 'Donna Summer', and 'Rocket Summer' a power pop band from Texas.

More traditional summer activities round out the top 10 phrases: 'summer camps', 'summer jobs', and 'summer vacation'.

Epiar is an Edmonton-based internet market research and search engine optimization company. Please contact us for more information or to commission your own research reports.

We all know Harry is a popular name, but which Harry is the most popular of all?  According to search trends, "the boy who lived" is even more popular than the real life British prince: 

Surprisingly, historical Harry's such as magician Harry Houdini, US President Harry Truman, and singer-songwriter Harry Chapin remain popular well after their deaths.  Additional Harry's include "Dirty" Harry Callahan, a 1971 movie casting Clint Eastwood as cop Dirty Harry, the gourmet food company "Harry and David", and musicians Harry Belafonte, Harry Connick Jr., and Debbie Harry.

Epiar is an Edmonton-based internet market research and search engine optimization company. Please contact us for more information or to commission your own research reports.

Based on data collected from close to 200 online sources over the past year, “DVD Easter eggs” (hidden items on DVD menus) have now surpassed chocolate and painted Easter eggs in popularity, measured by the number of times each phrase is searched in popular search engines. Similarly, our friend the Easter bunny remains less popular than Easter island.

Surprisingly, an overwhelming portion of searches centered on secular topics, with searches for the Easter bunny, Easter gifts and Easter games far outnumbering searches such as “Easter Sunday” (42 searches per day), “history of Easter” (34), “Easter prayer” (13) and “Easter sermon” (13).  By contrast, even “Easter bunny costume” is searched 47 times per day!

Searches for the spiritual side of Easter in 2007 would seem to remain an offline quest.

Epiar is an Edmonton-based internet market research and search engine optimization company. Please contact us for more information or to commission your own research reports. For a high resolution version of the Easter research graph, please click here.

This week, I decided to take a look at the topics and ideas emerging from online Christmas searches to see how people’s internet search behaviour reflects society’s most prevalent web-related Christmas thoughts. Are people thinking about Santa, baby Jesus, Christmas crafts & decorations, a favourite recipe, or what?

The following chart shows the most popularly searched concepts within the top several thousand search phrases that include the word “Christmas”:

Please click here for an expanded list of Christmas wishes as expressed in internet search.

Without surprise, online Christmas searches center around such popular topics as gifts, trees, food, and carols. I find each of these reports very interesting, reminding me how my own views on Christmas are just one of a million possible perspectives on the holiday season. Whichever of these thoughts you choose to focus on this holiday season, best wishes & happy holidays from everyone at Epiar!

Epiar Inc. is an Edmonton-based internet market research and search engine optimization company. Please contact us for more information or to commission your own research reports.

Recent research by Epiar Inc. explored the nature of online search in relation to Chicago. After analyzing the top 7000 phrases with an estimated annual search volume of over 50 million searches, the following topics emerged as the most prominent Chicago search topics:

Please click here for an expanded report on Chicago online search statistics.

Exploring Chicago Searches

Professional sports fans will be interested to see the high number of searches for Chicago’s football, baseball, and basketball teams. Apparently, the Bears’ very successful season is not limited to only the football field. It is amazing how searches for sports teams compare in number with searches for other Chicago features and indentifying characteristics - who knew professional sports were really that popular?

Tourist institutions and special events also appeared prominently within internet search, with the Chicago Marathon, the Chicago Auto Show, and the Art Institute of Chicago all attracting significant levels of public attention. Which local attractions do you think people might be searching for around your home town?

Searches by people in need of local services were also high, with phrases like “jobs in Chicago”, “home inspection Chicago”, and “Chicago police” in high search demand. Presumably, many more searches for local services are also being entered without the word “Chicago” in the phrase, possibly including a neighborhood geographic reference instead or no geographic mention at all.

With all of this talk about Chicago, it makes me want to go there to see if the search frequency research properly reflects the real city – good thing a couple of us from Epiar will be in town to present at a Search Engine Strategies conference there later this week!

Epiar Inc. is an Edmonton-based internet market research and search engine optimization company. Please contact us for more information or to commission your own research reports.

Recent research by Epiar Inc. took a look into these questions, exploring the top several thousand phrases entered into search engines which include the word “Toyota.” Curious to see which ideas and associations jumped to the top of the list, the following topics were uncovered as the most popular:

Please click here for an expanded report on the top Toyota search phrases.

Taking a Closer Look

Of interest to the Toyota executives and bean-counters, the sporty Supra was among the most popularly searched individual models, followed closely by the Tacoma, Camry, Corolla, Prius, Celica, and Tundra. The truck department at Toyota should be proud of their rise in brand power as compared to the ever-popular Toyota sport utility vehicles, sedans, and compact cars.

One interesting feature of the Toyota search phrases surrounded the manner in which people searched for Toyotas by model year. Searches for 2007, 2006, and 2005 vehicles were predictably the highest, followed by a surprisingly even number of searches for models dating from 2004 through the 1980s and beyond. Clearly, people are still concerned about buying or repairing their older Toyotas!

In relation to older models, searches for repairs, parts, service, and other phrases implying car-trouble also appeared within popular search. It would be interesting to compare the top several thousand repair-related search phrases of Toyota with those of Ford, Honda, GM, and others. Are Toyota’s repair phrases proportionally higher or lower than those of their competitors? Which parts & problems show up the most prominently in each manufacturer’s search phrases? How is Toyota’s reputation of mechanical reliability reflected in the volume of search requests for car service and repair manuals versus the other major auto brands? All interesting questions to save for another day…

Speaking of reliability – with this cold Edmonton winter weekend and somewhere to be tonight, I sure am glad my trusty Corolla is working just fine!

Epiar Inc. is an Edmonton-based internet market research and search engine optimization company. Please contact us for more information or to commission your own research reports.