Hallowe’en could be becoming more popular than Christmas, if search trends are anything to go by, one study has concluded.
In this country, more people search for Hallowe’en in October than for Christmas in December, found analysis from exhibition stand business Marler Haley.
Researchers also suggest that Halloween could surpass Christmas for yearly number of related searches in the next couple of years, if trends continue.
It found 17% more search traffic related to Halloween took place in October 2016 (10m related searches) than for Christmas in December 2016 (8.5m searches).
“We were shocked to see that more people search for Halloween related content in October than Christmas in December in the UK,” said Andrew Pocock, managing director of Marler Haley. “For businesses, search trends play an important role in understanding when to launch seasonal content.
“These findings highlight that when developing seasonal content, not every UK holiday or celebration should be treated with the same development timeline.
“People begin to search with earnest for both Halloween and Christmas in September, even though the celebrations are two months apart.
“This suggests that if you’re planning seasonal content for your business, then it’s best to check the seasonality for the exact holiday you’re planning for to maximise potential traffic and profit.”
However, although Halloween has more people searching in October than Christmas in December, Christmas has a much longer search tail, with people starting their festive searches in September.
More than two thirds (69%) of Halloween searches take place in October as compared to Christmas: 48% of annual searches are in December. Overall, found Marler Haley, Christmas has an annual search volume of 17.7 million in the UK as compared to Halloween’s 14.6 million (as of 2016).
Given the annual trend data, Marler Haley found that in 2016, Halloween was set to surpass Christmas for annual searches. With a steady growth of a 17% for Halloween searches each year, for 2016, the trend predicted a total search volume of 18 million, which would have beaten Christmas by 0.3m. Instead, search volume for Halloween fell by 5% in 2016, increasing the gap between the two holidays.
Marler Haley estimates that this year in the UK there will be 19.5 million searches for Christmas-related content. Marler Haley used Google Trends and Google Adwords Keyword planner to conduct its research, focusing on a time period back to 2004.
