Gluten Free trends in United Kingdom (UK) & England
The following analysis uses Goggle data sets. Previous Gluten Free Pages research showed that the UK started with a healthy ‘search per celiac’ value in 2004. However, while Australia was in front of the UK and remains so, by 2008 both the USA and Canada had overtaken this GFP market measure value. The UK gluten free online demand (searches) trend had previously (up until 2009) been very flat over the years (2004 to 2008) years.
When the top 50 monthly gluten associated searches are segmented into seven subcategories (see table below), it can be seen that each of the categories received a similar increase. While these increases are very large, it was found that all other leading gluten free online demand countries experienced an even stronger growth increase.
Google values for Dec 2009 showed the following changes in the seven Gluten Free Categories:
United Kingdom (UK) Nov 2009 Search Volumes
| Metrics |
GF generic |
Gluten diet |
GF recipe |
Coeliac |
Wheat free |
Locations |
GF specific foods |
Totals |
| % of terms |
14% |
10% |
20% |
12% |
16% |
4% |
24% |
100% |
| Total |
602,200 |
53,900 |
124,000 |
251,500 |
153,900 |
19,200 |
100,200 |
1,304,900 |
| Max |
301,000 |
14,800 |
27,100 |
90,500 |
60,500 |
14,800 |
18,100 |
526,000 |
| Median |
14,800 |
14,800 |
12350 |
35850 |
14800 |
9600 |
6,600 |
108,800 |
| % Search Volume |
46% |
4% |
10% |
19% |
12% |
1% |
8% |
100% |
Nov 2008 Search Volumes
| Metric |
GF generic |
Gluten diet |
GF recipe |
Coeliac |
Wheat Free |
Locations |
GF Specific Foods |
Totals |
| % of terms |
18 |
10 |
18 |
8 |
12 |
8 |
26 |
100% |
| Total |
375,700 |
23,480 |
58,480 |
193,180 |
95,700 |
8,280 |
54,280 |
809,100 |
| Max |
201,000 |
8,100 |
15,800 |
131,000 |
49,500 |
3,600 |
9,900 |
409,000 |
| Median |
8,100 |
6,600 |
3,600 |
28,900 |
9,900 |
2,100 |
2,900 |
59,200 |
| % Search Volume |
46 |
3 |
7 |
24 |
12 |
1 |
7 |
100% |
The first thing to notice about the tables is that the top 50 Google Gluten associated search terms increased over the last year from 809K to 1.3M (61%). The main group’s (gluten free) key phrases absolute volume changes were to gluten ( 201K -> 301K) and gluten free ( 135K -> 246K searches) per month.
United Kingdom (UK) TOP 50 proportions
The composition of the proportions of each group are significantly different from the standard proportions experienced by other leading online demand countries. For example, the USA NOV 2009 proportion graph shows what is considered to be the standard proportions representative of leading ‘celiac searches per month’ countries (eg: USA, Canada, Australia).
The proportion of the top 50’s main generic gluten free group remained stable at 46% of the top 50 searches and the second largest group ‘coeliacs’ decreased from 24% to 19%. The graph below shows that the overall increase in the top 50 Google terms was produced by a steady increase in all groups search volumes.
Group Search Volume Growths 2008 to 2009
| Group |
Total 2008 |
Total 2009 |
% Growth |
| GF Food |
375,700 |
602,200 |
60% |
| Gluten Diet |
23,480 |
53,900 |
130% |
| GF Recipe |
58,480 |
124,000 |
112% |
| Coeliac |
193,180 |
251,500 |
30% |
| Wheat Free |
95,700 |
153,900 |
61% |
| Location |
8,280 |
19,200 |
132% |
| Specific GF food |
54,280 |
100,200 |
85% |
One of the more interesting trends is the growth in the GF specific food group. In that group the leading phrases are still GF bread and flour, however a significant number of people are starting to search each month for gluten free cakes (21,600), dairy free gluten (24,100) and chocolate (6,600).
LONG TERM GROWTH
Google permits trend analysis on individual terms, but plotting the top 50 that comprise the main analysis would provide little useful insight. The phrase ‘gluten free’ represents 41% of ALL searches within the generic group so its two year trend is plotted below as a proxy.
It is noted that not all subregions of the United Kingdom (UK) have trend data available, however England trend data shows almost an exact match to UK data.
The graph above shows the search growth for gluten free for 2008 and 2009. Previous GFP trend line research and analysis for the UK shows that there is no particular seasonal trend. This is unusual in that most other leading gluten free search countries show strong seasonal trends over the last five years. The linear forecast over the past year extrapolates to a growth of 23% for this one term (compared with 10% for 2008).
The following table shows the Dec 2009 leading gluten free search cities in the UK, and their relative strength.
CONCLUSION
Previous analysis on the United Kingdom (UK) searches up to 2008 showed that while it had a relatively high ‘coeliac search per month’ value of 2.2 it had relatively flat growth. The analysis for 2009 shows that there has been significant growth in searches in the overall gluten category (top 50 terms).
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