Every year, Google processes more than two trillion search requests, which allow it not only to compose a portrait of any user, then to proudly say: Google knows everything about you and even more, but by tracking these requests, show trends – social, political, business.
“Using the Google Trends application, we analyzed how Ukrainians’ interest in buying an apartment in Kiev and in Ukraine as a whole changed. To do this, we studied the simplest request – “buy an apartment.” Popularity dynamics do not display absolute numbers, but the level of interest in a topic relative to the highest rate in the table for a specific region and time period. So, 100 points mean the highest level of request popularity, 50 – the level of request popularity, half as low as in the first case. 0 points means a location for which there is insufficient data on the request in question. We see that since 2014 the average interest in buying an apartment among users has grown two and a half times. Significant growth was recorded in 2019 and, assuming that the average number of requests per person did not change, this year there were much more new potential buyers of apartments than in previous years. Particularly increased interest in Kiev. But it is worth noting that such a sharp jump is also associated with the fact that when calculating the average interest for 2019, the traditional decline in November-December has not yet been taken into account” comments Olexandra Gluzdovska, Head of Data Science of DC Evolution.
Every January, Ukrainians bombard Google with requests to “buy an apartment,” activity is gradually decreasing by April, but with the end of the May holidays it starts to rise again until the August peak, and then decreases again until in December there is a sharp drop in the number of requests to an annual minimum. “This trend is repeating from year to year. Such a change in interest is associated primarily with the effect of the “New Year” and with the upcoming school year and business season, which symbolize the beginning of a new stage in life. But I want to emphasize that the dynamics of requests on the Internet and real sales may not correlate with each other. Requests only reflect interest in the product on the market” said Olexandra Gluzdovska.
If we talk about the preferences of Ukrainians in terms of “freshness” of housing, then from 2014 to 2017 they were more often interested in the primary business – its share in the structure of requests both in Kiev and in Ukraine as a whole reached 60%, but starting in 2018, interest in the primary began to decline and by September 2019 is 45%.