Since COVID-19 sent brands worldwide into uncharted consumer behavior territory, we’ve been finding ways to help establish new benchmarks. In this ongoing series of monthly local search trends, we are uncovering insights from 203,600 enterprise locations to illustrate how COVID is impacting local search volume, views, and conversion rates. In this post, we will discuss local consumer search behavior trends December presented.
In each of these analyses, you’ll find local search insights broken out by the following verticals: business services, financial services, sit-down and quick service restaurant, hotel, retail, and healthcare verticals.
Local Consumer Search Behavior Trends December Update
This month, we’re evaluating how local consumer search behavior trended in December 2020, as compared to the month prior. Looking for previous months’ data? See October 2020 and November 2020.
Business Services Brands
Interest in the business services vertical recovered slightly from November’s dips in both views and clicks. Views and searches had the strongest recovery and interest in clicks to driving directions also saw a small increase.
Financial Services
Interest in financial services verticals picked up heavily in December, recovering from a rocky November. Double-digit increases were noticed across every metric, with the greatest gain in clicks to make a phone call.
Sit-Down Restaurants
Interest in sit-down restaurants gained some traction in click behavior, with clicks to make a phone call and clicks to a website rising slightly. We encourage sit-down restaurants to continue to leverage attributes on their local listings to communicate whether they’re offering indoor dining, outdoor dining, no contact delivery, or takeout.
Quick Service Restaurants
Quick service restaurants saw increases across every metric. When compared to sit down restaurants, it appears customers are still feeling perhaps safer and more at ease grabbing their food to go from quick service restaurants.
Hotel Brands
Hospitality brands saw small increases across every metric in December, which can likely be attributed to getaways and family visits for the holidays.
Retail Brands
As expected, retailers saw a large increase in views, searches, and click behavior ahead of the holidays as consumers completed their last-minute shopping.
Healthcare
Healthcare facilities continued to receive clicks to their websites, views and driving directions in December. We anticipate healthcare will continue to see upward shifts in search behavior into the new year as COVID-19 vaccines continue to roll out to the public.
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