Over the last 18 months we have made improvements to the user trends that we share with you, providing more detail broken down by some of the main subjects on the site. Over the summer, we have been working hard to make these even more useful and timely for you.
So, why change the user trends?
Quite simply, to improve them!
While the current user trends gave some insights, the new trends will provide you with more information relevant to your subjects, which will help you understand what users are looking for, where we are identifying gaps and what success looks like.
We also found that while the search trends were interesting, there was little actionable information as we were providing you with information that looked back at the previous week – we should all be looking forwards not backwards!
What’s different?
We have made some significant changes to the trends to allow you to see a wider view of both what has been happening and what trends we believe are coming up to help you decide where your efforts are best focused when creating, updating and marketing your resources.
The trends will now be published once a month and will provide an overview of the previous month as well as subject specific information including search terms for the month ahead (i.e. in September’s user trends you will receive information relevant for October) and examples of top performing resources.
In detail, the two sections will be as follows:
What’s been happening:
- Overall top 20 search terms for the previous month
- An overview of the catalogue broken down by “Main Subject” and “Main Age” (for the most popular subjects)
Where to focus your attention:
- Top 10 search terms for the coming month based on previous year’s data (broken down by subject)
- Top performing resources - 2 free and 2 paid (broken down by subject) *
- Content call out for areas where we anticipate teacher demand for new content or where we know we have gaps in our catalogue
*We are not promoting or recommending the resources that we display within the trends pages. We are sharing them to give you an idea of what popular resources look like from the resource display page. Please note, we have not moderated these resources before sharing them with you; if you are concerned about the content included, please follow the usual reporting process.
Why do we provide this information?
Using the full range of the information that we provide in the user trends, you will be able to build up a picture of how many other resources are listed within your specialism and where we may have gaps, what people are generally looking for at a particular time of year, and what content and topics we expect to be popular based on upcoming events and current affairs.
We hope that you find this information useful. As always, we would love to hear any feedback or suggestions for further changes. We will be sending a survey out in a few months' time to ask for feedback so keep an eye out for that!