Tyre searches in Google down 18% in March 2020

Motorists have been doing less online pre-sale research related to tyres as a result of the coronavirus, according to Google search data. However, while the lockdown has led to a slowdown in tyre-related search traffic, there are already signs of recovery.

According to a Rezulteo analysis, March is generally the month when we change tyres, but this year the Covid-19 crisis has changed this. While over the last 12 months, “brand + tyre” Google searches increased by 8 per cent in Europe compared with the previous period, the coronavirus pandemic and associated lockdowns has reversed the trend.

This can be seen on Google where “brand + tyre” searches have dropped by 16 per cent in all European countries in March 2020 compared with the same period last year. These figures have only increased in Turkey (+14%), the Netherlands (+12%), Sweden (+13%), Finland (+47%) and in Switzerland (+2%).

The countries worst hit in the comparison were the first to be affected by Covid-19: France (-34%), Spain (-35%), Italy (-41%) are the countries worst hit by this crisis whereas the UK (-11%), Germany (-13%) and Poland (-16%) are affected to a lesser extent. The March data is based on the analysis of search volumes of 28 tyre brands with “brand” + “tyre” queries in official languages across Europe on Google Ads, during the period 1 August 2018 to 31 March 2020.

Nevertheless, positive signs are starting to appear through data for April. Since the Easter weekend, Google searches using the keyword “tyre” have increased significantly in 8 rezulteo countries (France, Spain, Italy, UK, Netherlands, Germany, Turkey and Poland).

Tyre searches in Google

In Italy, for example, 16 April showed the highest number of “pneumatici” searches since the general lockdown was announced on 9 March. This is twice the number of searches over the previous week which had already doubled compared with the week before.

For all countries taken together, Google searches have increased by 27 per cent at the beginning of April compared with the last two weeks of March. If we have yet to find the volumes at the beginning of March, particularly in France, UK and in Spain where recovery is very slow, the end of April and the steps to end lockdown should accelerate this trend.

Like the March data, the April figures are based on the Google Trends platform, using the keyword “tyre” in the official language of 8 countries with rezulteo website: France, Spain, Italy, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Germany, Turkey and Poland.