Search queries
 "Zoran Artmagic")
Reviewed by Zoran Artmagic ·
Three terms are often confused, but they mean different things:
Search query: the entire search event, counted across all people. “Garden furniture” is searched far more often in May than in November. The search query is the view of demand.
Search term: the specific words an individual types in, with their variants and typos. More on this in the entry on the search term.
Keyword: the term you yourself align a page or ad with. How to find the right ones is described under keyword research.
This entry looks at search queries as a whole: as a signal of what customers want, and of when that changes.
Search queries are measured demand
Before a merchant adds a new product line, the decision is often based on gut feeling, trade fair impressions or what purchasing recommends. Search queries add a hard figure: how many people are actually searching for it, is interest growing or shrinking, and in which regions is it highest?
An example: an outdoor store is considering adding packrafts to its range. Google Trends shows whether interest has been rising over the past years or was only a short hype. Keyword Planner shows the order of magnitude of monthly searches. Together, they don’t replace gut feeling, but they correct it before money is tied up in stock.
Search queries follow the calendar
Many search queries fluctuate with the season, and earlier than many merchants think. People search for garden furniture from February, for ski equipment from early autumn, for gifts long before Advent. If you only publish your seasonal pages when demand peaks, you are too late, because new pages need time to rank.
This leads to two simple rules:
Prepare in time: Seasonal pages should be finished and indexed a few weeks before search queries start to rise.
Keep fixed addresses: A page such as /black-friday stays at the same address every year and is only updated. A new page /black-friday-2026 starts from zero every year.
Spotting trends and acting in time
Alongside the seasons, there are short-term spikes: a product goes viral on social media, a change in the weather, a TV show, a major sporting event. If you notice such increases early in Google Trends or in your own Search Console, you can quickly provide a matching category, a theme page or a short guide.
The standard remains the same: the page has to genuinely answer the customers’ question and show the matching products. A page that only repeats the trending term won’t bring in orders.
When search queries disappear
Search behaviour also changes permanently. New product terms emerge, old ones disappear. Where people used to search for “netbook”, customers today search for tablets or lightweight notebooks. If your categories and copy are still aligned with terms hardly anyone types in anymore, you lose visitors without anything having changed on your own site.
Content that was good five years ago is therefore not automatically still good. A regular look at search queries shows which pages should be adapted, merged or realigned.
Reading search queries in Search Console
Google Search Console shows, for every page of your store, which search queries it appears for. Four patterns are particularly revealing:
Many impressions, few clicks: The store is seen but not chosen. This is usually down to the snippet on the results page. Title and description often improve the click-through rate faster than any other measure.
Positions between 8 and 15: These search queries are just short of the first page. Targeted work on the matching page often brings the biggest gain here.
Search queries without a matching page: Google shows your store even though no page really answers the question. A landing page is missing here.
Brand and non-brand separately: Search queries containing your store name show the strength of your brand. All the others show how many new customers you win through search.
One important note: compare periods with the previous year, not with the previous month. Otherwise the decline after the season looks like a problem, even though it is normal.
Search queries in the age of AI search
With AI assistants, search queries are becoming longer and more personal. Instead of “hiking boots alps”, people ask ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Perplexity: “I’m planning a hut-to-hut tour in the Dolomites in June. What shoes do I need, and what should I look out for?”
These queries don’t appear in any Search Console. You can still get to know them: from the questions put to customer service and sales, from product reviews, and by testing the assistants yourself with your own customers’ questions. Which answers AI systems give on your topics, and whether your store appears in them, is measured by arboro.PULSE. How stores become visible there is described in the entry on Generative Engine Optimization.
How to turn search queries into a strategy for your store is shown on SEO for online stores.
Search queries are the largest market research in the world, and it is free. Whoever reads them regularly knows earlier than the competition what customers will want to buy tomorrow.