Real Estate Trends – Search Insights

Google has recently launched a new service called “Search Insights”. As with most Google services this product is free and very powerful. Search Insights allows you to research the popularity of search terms over time and by region. Different time periods or regions can also be compared side by side. It should be noted that the traffic numbers and regional demand are all normalised and so if you want to find specific search volume numbers in each region you should use Google’s Keyword Tool. 

As someone who has just listed their house for sale, I wanted to examine the long term trend in “real estate” related searches to see how this year’s down turn in the housing market is reflected in people searching for real estate. 

The two graphs below show the last four years of search demand for “real estate”. The second graph shows each year side by side and it does not take a rocket scientist to determine that I should have sold my house last year!