Yahoo! Clues Tells The Story of Christmas Through Search

Yahoo! Clues (which Paid Search Manager, Adrian Epstein, reported on last month) has just celebrated its first month in existence.

For the uninitiated, Yahoo! Clues is Yahoo!’s answer to Google Trends, providing data and charts on search activity over time for specific keywords, as well as demographic and location information on searchers.

Coincidentally, the first month of Yahoo! Clues covered the Christmas period, which provides a perfect opportunity to showcase the power of this tool in a retrospective of Christmas 2010 through the medium of Search.

In the first set of charts, the mad panic for ‘last minute gifts’ is revealed, with twice as many women as men searching on this phrase. Then, as the big day builds, both genders get romantic as they search on the keyword ‘mistletoe’. However, on Christmas Day itself it’s time to ‘cook turkey’, with more women than men searching on this term.

Yahoo! Clues Describes the Lead Up to Christmas 2010

What about after the festive season? Well, it’s no surprise that the phrase ‘hangover’ was heavily searched on on January 1st (58% of searchers were male). Ouch! Once the fog of alcohol cleared, thoughts turned to ‘new job’ and ‘diets’, with women more likely to search on both terms.

Yahoo! Clues Reveals What People Are Searching on After Christmas

Although this data reflects only searches within the US, Yahoo! Clues seems to be accurately depicting the changing priorities, hopes and wants of consumers as they plan their lives using Yahoo! search, which means it’s another useful resource for search marketing practitioners.

Note: We’ve slightly amended the charts above to overlay the demographic information from Yahoo! Clues over the top of the charts to conserve space – things look a little neater in the tool itself.