Hitwise Intelligence - LeeAnn Prescott - US
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September 20, 2006
Spinach Recall Prompts Increase in Searches for Spinach Dip Recipes
I was shocked last week to learn of the recall on fresh spinach due to E. coli contamination. As a lifelong vegetarian (OK, pescatarian) and reader of Fast Food Nation, I thought that O157:H7 E. coli contamination only occured in meat, and thus it was unlikely that I would be at risk. Not suprisingly, Hitwise search term charting showed that searches for spinach related terms increased substantially last week.
In looking at search term suggestions for 'spinach' previous to the recall, I was interested to find that most searched for spinach recipes are spinach dip and spinach artichoke dip. Spinach dip is typically made with frozen spinach, which has not been recalled, and the chart above shows that the volume of searches for 'spinach dip recipe' were up 184% last week (week ending 9/16/06 vs. week ending 9/9/06) and searches for 'spinach dip' were up 34%. It seems that all the attention on spinach made people think about how good spinach dip is. I called a local restaurant that is famous for its spinach dip to see if it was still being served, and they had an answer down pat, saying that it was made with frozen spinach 2 months ago. I think that's about the only time I'd like to hear that a restaurant is serving something that old, even though I've eaten much older food from my freezer!
A look at the search term suggestion for this past week shows that the E. coli concerns were top of mind for consumers. What's most revealing about the chart and the the table below compared to the one above is that people will go to a search engine and type in the most simplistic query possible to find news. Above we see that 'spinach' accounted for only 2.05% of spinach related searches, while last week it accounted for 11.12%. Search term analysis for 'spinach' last week showed that the bulk of traffic from the term was going to news sites. Search data can be extremely revealing in discovering how consumers are actually searching on a hot topic, and can be used to adjust keyword lists on a timely basis.
Posted by LeeAnn Prescott at 10:52 AM
Posted to Food and Beverage
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