The UK Gluten Free Market Grew at 62% in 2009 – See What People in the ‘Mother Land’ Are Eating
The UK Gluten Free Market Grew at 62% in 2009 – See What People in the ‘Mother Land’ Are Eating
The following analysis uses Google data sets. Previous Gluten Free Pages research showed that the UK started with a healthy ‘search per celiac per month’ value of 2.2 in 2004. However, while Australia was in front of the UK and remains so, by 2008 both the USA and Canada had overtaken this GFP market measure value. The UK gluten free online demand (searches) trend has been very flat over the last five years, until last year.
When the top 50 monthly gluten associated searches are segmented into seven subcategories (see table below), it can be seen that each of the categories received a similar increase. While these increases are very large, it was found that all other leading gluten free online demand countries experienced an even stronger growth increase.
The first thing to notice about the gluten free search terms is that the top 50 Google Gluten associated search terms increased over the last year from 809K to 1.3M (+62%). The main group’s (gluten free) key phrases absolute volume changes were to gluten (201K -> 301K) and gluten free ( 135K -> 246K searches).
TOP 50 proportions
The composition of the proportions of each group are significantly different from the standard proportions experienced by other leading online demand countries. For example, the USA NOV 2009 gluten free group proportion data shows what is considered to be the standard proportions representative of leading ‘celiac searches per month’ countries (eg: USA, Canada, Australia).
The proportion of the top 50’s main generic gluten free group remained stable at 46% of the top 50 searches and the second largest group ‘celiacs’ decreased from 24% to 19%. The table below shows that the overall increase in the top 50 Google terms was produced by an increase in all groups search volumes.
GF GROUP……………….Search VOL 08………Volumes 2009………% Increase
GF Generic………………375,700……………….602,200………………60%
Gluten diet………………23,480…………………53,900……………..130%
GF Recipe………………..58,480………………..124,000…………….112%
Coeliac…………………..193,180……………….251,500……………..30%
Wheat free………………95,700………………..153,900………………61%
GF Locations…………….8,280………………….19,200………………132%
GF specific foods……….54,280………………..100,200……………….85%
One of the more interesting trends is the growth in the GF specific food group. In that group the leading phrases are still GF bread and flour, however a significant number of people are starting to search for cakes, ‘dairy free gluten’ and chocolate.
LONG TERM GROWTH
Google permits trend analysis on individual terms, but plotting the top 50 that comprise the main analysis would provide little useful insight. The phrase ‘gluten free’ represents 41% of ALL searches within the generic group so its two year trend is plotted below as a proxy.
It is noted that not all subregions of the UK have trend data available, however England trend data shows almost an exact match to UK data.
Previous GFP trend line research and analysis for the UK shows that there is no particular seasonal trend. This is unusual in that most other leading gluten free search countries show strong seasonal trends over the last five years. The linear forecast over the past year extrapolates to a growth of 23% for this one term (compared with 10% for 2008).
The following table shows the Dec 2009 leading gluten free search citites in the UK, and their relative strength.
UK Search Importance
St Albans………………….1.0
Thames Ditton……………0.67
Milton Keynes…………….0.605
Reading……………………0.595
Sheffield…………………..0.575
Oxford……………………..0.57
Watford……………………0.57
Hull…………………………0.545
Poplar………………………0.54
Edinburgh………………….0.535
CONCLUSION
Previous analysis on UK searches up to 2008 showed that while it had a relatively high ‘celiac search per month’ value of 2.2 it had relatively flat growth. The analysis for 2009 shows that there has been significant growth in searches in the overall gluten category (top 50 terms).
