Google Trends Show Antiques Heading South

I started to play around with a Google feature called Trends recently and noticed some troubling, well trends. Using the words Antiques, Collectibles, American Art, Auctions and Antique Show, there seems to be a universally downward spiral in searches being conducted.

For example, using the word antiques, the peak seems to be in 2004, the earliest period in the graph. The low point seems to be at the end of 2009. More troubling, the number of news references containing the term increased significantly beginning in mid-2008 and peaking in the third quarter of 2009. Most of the top cities using the search term are in the UK, although Boston, New York and Atlanta are in the top ten.

Using the word collectibles, the trend is the similar, although all of the top ten cities using this term are in the U.S. They include Philadelphia, Tampa, St. Louis, Orlando, Dallas, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Atlanta and Phoenix. You know this means the premiere American antique show, the Philadelphia Antique Show is in the nation’s collectibles capital.

If you compare search and news information for collectibes and antiques, the word antiques pretty consistently gets twice the traffic as collectibles. Using the word antique show, the peaks and valleys are greater with the valleys more pronounced in the fourth quarter. This is to be expected as the number of shows is weighted toward the beginning of the year. Top cities for this search term include Albany, Cincinnati, Rochester, Boston, Miami, Houston, Philadelphia, Austin, New York and Atlanta.

Comparing sales channels, while also experiencing a downward trend, the frequency of the word auction is at times more than 50 times that of antique show. News mentions of auction seem to have a dramatic peak at the beginning of 2009. Perhaps it’s the economy, stupid.

The frequency of antique mall seems to be pretty steady, although minimal in actual searches. That search term is being used most in Louisville, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Kansas City (MO), Fort Worth, Madison, Kansas City (KS), Columbus (OH), Richardson (TX) and St. Louis.

Put in the seach term ebay and you will notice more news mentions in 2008 and 2009. Some of these are not related to the industry, Ebay to buy Skype being one example. If there is a downward trend here, it only becomes really apparent in 2010. From 2004 until 2008 is largely an upward trend. Use of the term 1stDibs exceeds ebay and begins frequent use in late 2008. The word Latique does not appear in graphs.

The terms baseball cards, comics, LP, arts and crafts, American art and modernism all show downward trends.

I’m, not sure what to make of it all. Surely the recession has weighed on the market, but I’d imagine those looking to sell might hit the internet too. The only term I tried that showed a clearly upward trend was Lady Gaga. Her #1 city is Milpitas, CA.