At this time of year we often reflect on the past 12 months and look ahead to the forthcoming year. I’ve already reviewed 2010 in a previous blog post and now it’s time to look ahead and see what people are looking forward to in 2011.

Looking at the top search terms for ‘prediction 2010′ and ‘prediction 2011′ in the last week of December this year and last year you can see that there are a lot of recurring themes. People are interested in predictions for house prices, horoscopes and the Oscars at this time of year.

What’s interesting to note between this year and last year is the emphasis in December 2009 on the housing market. Post recession UK Internet users were keen for information and early indicators of which way house prices would move, which is why half of the top 10 search terms for 2010 included the word ‘house’ or ‘housing’. By December 2010 the focus had shifted away from housing to the Oscars and the weather, with much less emphasis on the housing market.
Aside from the top search terms, the fastest-moving search terms which had shown the biggest growth year-on-year were for sporting events, including the NFL and the Premiership. Other fast rising prediction terms included guessing the Bank of England base rate and the weather over the Christmas period.

The NFL is a surprise top entry which just goes to show the growing appreciation for American football in the UK. The downstream results for the search term ‘nfl predictions’ indicate that sports gambling sites are prominent recipients of traffic, but the top site with nearly 31% of all clicks from the term was content based – ESPN’s NFL site.

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