Valentine’s Shoppers Head Out Earlier

If you are a retailer, particularly if you sell certain merchandise, you are probably well aware that Valentine’s Day is coming up soon. That means you might be selling a lot certain items, and it’s a great time to market certain ones as well.

Google has a couple of different posts up looking at Valentine’s Day-related product search. The company has determined, based on data from its Insights for Search Tool, that Valentine’s Day searches for 2010 are much hotter in eastern states in the U.S. than they are in rest of the nation.

"Just as you can see specific image search queries and news search queries on Google Insights for Search, you can now also see specific Product Search queries when consumers are ‘searching for stuff to buy,’" says Julia Tang of Google’s Retail Team. "Recent rising searches show that popular items include pandora jewelry, Timex I-Control watches, various e-book readers, and various smartphone models."

"On a national level, so far search intensity level is in line with trends seen in the previous years," says Julia Tang of Google’s Retail Team. "However, as with Black Friday and Cyber Monday, we have seen ‘Valentine’s Day’ searches rising earlier than the year prior, indicating that consumers are shopping earlier online for this occasion."

With shopping happening earlier, perhaps this should be taken as a sign for things to come with regards to future holidays. It may be a little late to get the early Valentine’s shoppers at this point, although there are no doubt plenty of shoppers still out there waiting to buy. However, if the trend described above continues, you may want to prepare earlier for events throughout the year.