Google has released the trending and most searched queries for 2012 on their Google Zeitgeist 2012 website. Although there’s a lot of similarities in search queries through out the world, there’s a lot of interesting information. And I wanted to do a comparison of the top ten search queries for the MENA region with emphasis on the UAE, KSA and Egypt and see what major differences if any appear. But before I get into the data, check out the cool PSY-Droid Google inserted in the footer of the website:
UAE
KSA
Egypt
Takeaways:
There are a lot of takeaways for brands in the region, Here are some of the highlights I would like to share:
- People in KSA and Egypt searched for more high end fashion brands than in the UAE.
- Arabic search queries where much more higher in KSA and Egypt than in the UAE.
- Egypt’s trending searches where mostly surrounding the political situation.
- UAE’s trending searches where split between, products, entertainment and current events.
- Travel destinations showed a significant difference for the three countries, where the majority of searches in the UAE where for international destinations, in the KSA they more regional and finally more local in destinations in Egypt.
The reason I mention these specific takeaways is because a large number of them apply to either brands in the region or online stores and travel booking websites. I think the big players have search engine marketing locked down and know who and where to target, but to the others that aren’t seeing enough traffic coming their way from google, maybe they should focus on taking a deeper look into the search engine’s data.
If you’d like to know more about how they measured these searches, you can visit Google Zeitgeist 2012