With digital marketing going upside down, the love for data and trends have been continuously changing in this ongoing dynamic environment. To keep up with the needs of consumers, marketers have to continuously keep trends in check. 

The one way to keep yourself up with the changing behavior of customers is by understanding their choices and what they exactly search for. For example, during covid-19, the searches for “how to make hand sanitizer”, “can I get coronavirus twice” and “grocery online near me” have been increased drastically. 

Many offline retail people switched their business to online mode to survive in ever-changing markets. 

Here is a quick comparison of online consumer trends Globally vs MENA

Source – Visual.ly

No doubt, the global pandemic has been the most significant event of our lifetime. With more and more people started working from home and lockdowns worldwide the searching habits have been changed drastically. 

Read on to find what people are searching for in the MENA region: - 

The rise in Virtual Meetings 

When it comes to working, virtual meetings are the new norm. The search volume for keywords like Zoom meetings, Google meet, Skype, hangouts have been severely increased in the last few months. 

For example - This is a 12-months graph for Zoom meeting. Although the peak has been passed, the search for the term is still high. 

Source - Google Trends 

Home Schooling

With Covid-19, the rise of home-schooling related searches has been increased. It is so because like offices, schools & colleges were also closed during the pandemic. So, parents and even schools started to teach children online by engaging them in some fun activity.

The searches for homeschooling have been increased to 10,000 in UAE during Covid-19.

Source - Google Trends

Puzzles 

Generally, searches for keywords like maths puzzles, crossword puzzles, and puzzles for kids have relatively equal searches throughout the year. But in 2020, due to pandemics, the searches have been drastically increased especially in the month of April and May. 

The reason is people have a lot of free time which they had utilized in searching and solving puzzles. 

Source - Google Trends

Online Grocery 

Online grocery shopping was always rising even before the 2020 pandemic. But during covid-19, the e-grocery has taken over the market and is all set to become a new norm. There has been a huge spike in online grocery shopping around the UAE and other middle east regions.  

For example – The keyword online grocery Abu Dhabi has seen a hike of 60% in searches while lulu online grocery and lulu online has seen a hike of 90% in searches during the pandemic. 

Source - Google Trends

Black Lives Matter 

Pandemic was a global issue in 2020 and social media, news channels have been discussing it with global stats. But besides pandemic, the “Black Lives Matter” movement has been quite influential in 2020 especially in the month of May.

Check the statistics below –

Source - Google Trends 

Tours & Picnics

After sitting at home for months, no doubt people have got really bored and they are trying to look out for some getaways following the new normal norms. The same has been reflected in searches as well.

The search for weekend getaways was highest in the month of August 2020. This was the time when the entire world has accepted the covid-19 and started living normally in this new normal.

However, the search volume is not the same throughout. The reason for frequent changes can be because of growing cases around the region.

Other than the above keywords, the searches for IPL 2020, love for videos, music has seen a good search volume. Moreover, the online education portal's growth has been five folds in the MENA region.

The above search trends can assist a marketer in building a campaign as it is a great way to gather insights on people passion and pain points.