The State of the Economy (According to Google Trends)

Black Friday Online

Black Friday is upon us once again, a joyous occasion where Americans show just how far they’ll go to save a buck. Of course for many that’s very important these days, so I imaged this Black Friday to be especially crazy. While we have to wait till early tomorrow morning to find out, we can get some insight thanks to Google Trends. 

As I was scanning it tonight I thought it spoke very well for the current economy here in the states. With tighter budgets this year, where is everyone looking for deals? Let’s take a look at current search trend rankings and find out.

Right away in the top spots we see outlets are going to be big. I’ve watched trends over a few Black Fridays and never seen this many listings for outlets, in fact other outlet related terms are included throughout the rest of the list (over a dozen times). Looks like folks are going to try to score deals on already discounted goods this year.

Further down we see Apple and iPods are still the hot product to snap up. I’m sure they will do just fine this year, unlike many other retailers who don’t start to appear till further down the ranking list.

Finally we start to see some of the big name retailers, all the usual suspects are here. Circuit city placed a little higher as well, with their recent bankruptcy announcement you can bet they’ll see lots of looters shoppers.

Eck the rack! That’s like where clothes go to die.

Finally down at the very very end of the like we have Saks. The premium department store is still generating some buzz, but not even close to the others.

So there you have it, I encourage you to scan trends a few times over the course of the day. It’s a unique insight into this strange pastime. 

As for me, I’ll be doing all my shopping with Amazon Prime this year.

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