Understanding Consumers’ Google Searches

01 January 2017

It is estimated that the global tuna industry is worth around USD 42.2 billion, according to a study by Poseidon Aquatic Resource Management Ltd. Such vast amounts of money generate attention, events and controversies. Which details of the industry have seeped into public consciousness? What is globally known, or cared about? Google Trends, a feature of the search engine that gives an insight into user behavior, explains all…

Besides the traditionally popular recipe searches, which were the most common, the top four tuna-related searches globally in the last 18 months were surprisingly related to legal matters and were all made in the same country; the US.

The terms ‘tuna lawsuit’, ‘starkist tuna refund’, ‘starkist tuna lawsuit’, and ‘tuna recall 2016’, are evidence of what have been challenging times for the US industry.

Searches that had tuna as a keyword, but were unrelated to the industry were discarded; e.g. a brand of watch with a model named ‘baby tuna’, or the Albanian popstar named Tuna. The ‘rising’ trends, which show a significant upturn in the amount of times a term is searched, showed the following:

It is important to note that the data displayed has been calculated by Google using a formula and is proportional in relation to time, a region’s geographical size and the density of its population. This means that search items are shown by their relative popularity, so countries and regions with a larger population and size do not always overshadow smaller ones.

Although there were two major lawsuits against US tuna firms launched in the summer of 2015, the antitrust case involving the ‘Big 3’ US tuna brands did not register with an upturn in Google Trends, considering it was announced in July. It is clear that it was StarKist’s underfilling civil case that reached most public attention, when a major announcement was made in August.

StarKist agreed a total settlement of USD 12 million on August 26, 2015, and Google recorded an eruption of the search ‘tuna lawsuit’, which reached its peak between August 23 and August 29. It seems it was during this window that customers wanted to learn how to make a claim, both for money and for tuna vouchers.

The following March, Bumble Bee, another US tuna leader, announced a product recall after admitting that there was possible contamination in up to 1.5 million of its branded tuna cans, this can be seen in the term ‘tuna recall’, peaking between March 13 and 19.

The search continued to be typed into Google when it became clear that more cans were affected by the contamination. Chicken of the Sea, the owner of the processing plant that was also responsible for the Bumble Bee issue, made its own statement after Bumble Bee. It communicated that the tuna in its 5oz Chunk Light in water and oil “may have been undercooked due to an equipment malfunction, which was uncovered during a routine inspection.”

The manufacturing error also affected private label cans, and all in all around 2 million references were recalled from the market. So, in total, the public would have received information from several sources, which explains the popularity of the search.

Over the last five years, the most common global tuna-related search has been for ‘Wicked Tuna’, a National Geographic TV show that follows crews fishing for Atlantic bluefin. Popular in the US, Canada, Australia and the UK, the latest season concluded in May 2016, and viewing the Google results, it was searched almost 50 percent less than it was in its peak, in June 2015. The darker shading on the map represents where ‘wicked tuna’ was most frequently searched.

The most common search in the Philippines is for ‘tuna festival’, which is an annually held event in General Santos City. The tuna hub in the country, GenSan takes the opportunity every September to celebrate our favorite fish, which is represented by the regular, sharp incline on the graph.

Until now, all of the searches related to tuna have been in English. If English was used as the sole language to search in globally, some countries that have a significant interest in tuna would have been left out. Spain and South American countries, such as Ecuador, are vital to the tuna industry. See below the proportion of searches for tuna in English and Spanish (atún).

Though we can see that in global terms, searches for ‘tuna’ proportionately outstrip ‘atún’ by four or five times to one, note that of all the countries that return data, Spain has the highest proportion of searches for ‘atún’.

Furthermore, searches for ‘atún’ spike every spring, which may be related to the spawning season of the eastern stock of the Atlantic bluefin, which is when the fish is targeted in the Mediterranean.

Within Spain, the most popular tuna related search is ‘Zahara de los Atunes’. This village in Cádiz, Andalusia, is a popular destination for tourists, but was first settled by the Phoenicians around 1100BC. It has a traditional trap fishery, called the almadraba, to thank for the prosperity and development that has left it as a modern attraction. The time of year that it is most commonly searched in Google is during the summer time; with this location being a popular vacation spot.

Considerably less searched for, but the next most popular query is indicative of the region, and Spain as a whole. ‘Ruta del atún’ is an annual gastronomic festival also held in Cádiz at the end of April. Like ‘Zahara de los Atunes’, the ‘ruta del atún’ is an example of how this simple protein source has transcended food to become part of the nation’s culture and identity.

The top searches for tuna are unsurprisingly punctuated with terms related to recipes, especially when an individual country’s data is looked at. Here are both Spanish and English searches to compare favorite dishes from around the world.

Each dish in the graph is the most popularly searched for in its respective country, but as you can see, the data suggests that no other nation loves its favorite tuna dish as much as the Maltese love their tuna dip. ‘Tartar de atún con aguacate’ is a simple and tasty dish made from avocado and tuna tartar. The most popular dish in Ecuador, ‘sango de atún’, is prepared with flour or tender corn and usually cooked with an onion and garlic sauce.

Overall the search results show that the public makes regular enquiries regarding their consumer rights. No doubt marketing departments are wondering how to recreate positive circumstances that can lead to such high engagement. Recipes are a frequent search result in Google.

It is evident that aside from just feeding communities, tuna has contributed to civilization and is celebrated for doing so, in national festivals such as the one held in the Philippines. Google has showed that tuna has great global diversity, meaning different things to different cultures. The search engine is a tool that allows the industry to understand where the mind of the customer is, when he/she wants information related to tuna.

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