Is “What does simp mean” really an interesting search phrase? Every year Google releases a list of trending search terms, and it’s mostly smoke and mirrors — they want to present a completely different picture than how reality actually looks.
There’s a clear narrative that Google wants us to listen to. It goes something like this: those of us who use the search engine are now asking questions instead of searching for specific words. We’ll get back to why it’s so important for Google that we believe this, but first some background. Every year, Google puts out a press release about which search terms have “trended” over the past year. These always get a lot of media coverage — even we wrote about it in the article “How Swedes Googled in 2019”. The data in the report isn’t wrong, it’s just very carefully selected and presented in a particularly vague way.
Trending search terms 2020
Let’s take a look at the presentation Google released for 2020. As usual, it’s divided into a number of categories: sports searches, people who passed away, and no fewer than three categories with queries formulated specifically as questions. Searches starting with What, How, and Why. In the Sports category, the European Handball Championship topped the list as the most trending term in 2020, with 348,000 searches in January alone.
When it comes to searches starting with What, “What does simp mean” was at the top. Here it’s worth looking at the data. The month with the highest number of searches for that phrase was September, with 13,700 searches. Under Why, we find “Why do we celebrate Sweden’s National Day” at the top with 10,600 searches in June.
How did phrases with around 10,000 searches end up on the same top list as the Handball European Championship?
One important thing to keep in mind is that this isn’t a list of the biggest searches in 2020. The search term Facebook had around 10 million searches per month and still didn’t make it onto Google’s list. The list shows the terms that grew the most during a short period of time. And it’s not even a list of the fastest-growing searches overall, but of the fastest-growing terms within a specific vertical.
Google chooses not to show how many searches were actually made when they release this information. They don’t explain how the search phrases compare to each other or provide actual numbers. This makes things a bit fuzzy, and it’s easy to believe that “What does simp mean” plays in the same league as the Handball European Championship. It’s also easy to assume that even if these aren’t the biggest searches, they must at least be very large search phrases.
It’s a smokescreen
Google has long had a stated ambition to be a machine that answers questions. They’ve rebranded search terms or keywords into search queries, often talking about how they now understand the searcher’s intent. The advice given to SEO beginners is: Answer questions, because the visitor has asked a question. That’s not necessarily bad advice — but not for the reason Google suggests.
The truth is that when we use Google, we type in keywords or search terms, and we don’t often phrase them as full questions. More often, we start with one keyword and then refine the search by adding more words and terms. That’s why we search with odd grammar and what often looks like strange word splits.
- Car > New car > Buy new car > Buy new car Enköping
- Boil potatoes > Boil potatoes mash > Boil potatoes mash gas stove
We search for “Buy new car Enköping” because our behavior isn’t to write out a full question — instead, we start with a keyword and then build and refine it step by step.
With several different top lists, including separate ones just for searches starting with What, Google creates a presentation that technically shows the fastest-growing queries beginning with What. But these come from very small volumes and from a vertical that hardly compares when set against the major categories.
What does this mean for my SEO?
There are plenty of guides that tell you to create content that answers questions because that’s supposedly how people use Google today. You should throw all those guides in the trash — they’re based on an idea that is, at its core, completely wrong. The most common searches today are not phrased as questions. They’re keywords like Handball European Championship or Facebook.
However, there is another reason to write your content as answers to questions. The reason is that Google really wants to give the impression that it answers questions, rather than being something as simple as a search engine. This means they favor Q&A-style content in the search results — so much so that it even gets its own special appearance in the search listings, taking up more space than other results.
Yes, it’s good to answer questions — but not for the reason you think
In summary, it is indeed valuable to create content that “answers a question,” but not because user behavior looks like that — rather because Google wants to appear to be a machine that provides answers.
Magnus Bråth
Consultant & Adviser
Magnus is one of the world's most prominent search marketing specialists and primarily works with management and strategy at his agency Brath AB.