Google's Rhythm of Food

I spend a lot of my time designing surveys, so perhaps I shouldn't admit this. One of the most interesting pieces of consumer research I've seen recently doesn't contain a single questionnaire.

It's called The Rhythm of Food, an interactive project that uses years of Google search data to show how interest in different foods changes throughout the year. If you haven't seen it, it's well worth five minutes of your time: https://rhythm-of-food.net/

August's most common food searches

At first glance, it's a clever visualisation. Look a little closer and it's a fascinating lesson in human behaviour. Searches for pumpkin spice creep earlier every year. Hot chocolate arrives with the colder weather. BBQ recipes appear the moment Britain enjoys two consecutive sunny days. Turkey dominates December. None of these patterns are particularly surprising, but that's exactly why they're interesting. Human behaviour is often far more predictable than we'd like to believe.

The project also raises an uncomfortable question for market researchers. If millions of Google searches can reveal so much about people without asking a single question, where does that leave surveys?

It's a fair challenge.

There's been a growing narrative over the last few years that behavioural data is replacing traditional research. Why ask someone what they're interested in when you can see what they searched for? Why ask about purchase intentions when you can analyse what they actually bought? Why run surveys when websites, apps and search engines quietly collect behavioural data every second of the day?

The answer, I think, is that we're asking the wrong question.

Behavioural data is incredibly powerful. It tells us what happened. It tells us when it happened. Sometimes it even tells us where it happened. What it rarely tells us is why.

Imagine searches for sourdough suddenly double. Has a celebrity chef published a new recipe? Has TikTok started another food trend? Are people trying to save money? Has a supermarket launched a promotion? The data shows the behaviour, but not necessarily the motivation behind it.

That's where market research still earns its place.

Too often our industry turns methodologies into opposing teams. Surveys versus behavioural data. Quantitative versus qualitative. Passive versus active research. It's an argument that creates more heat than light because every methodology answers a different question.

Search data can reveal emerging interest before sales figures catch up. Customer analytics show how people move through a website. Sales data tells us what people bought. Surveys measure awareness, perceptions and satisfaction. Interviews uncover motivations, frustrations and emotions that no dashboard ever will.

None of these sources is complete on its own. The best researchers don't just collect data. They connect it. That's the lesson I took from The Rhythm of Food. Not that surveys are becoming obsolete, nor that behavioural data is the future of insight. Instead, it's a reminder that understanding people has always required more than one lens.

As AI continues to make analysing behavioural data faster and easier, I actually think the role of market researchers becomes more valuable, not less. Businesses won't struggle to collect information. They'll struggle to make sense of it. They'll need people who know when behavioural data is enough, when a survey is needed and when the answer lies somewhere in between.

Perhaps that's why I enjoyed The Rhythm of Food so much. It's not really a project about food. It's a reminder that people leave clues everywhere. Our job isn't simply to ask better questions. Sometimes it's recognising when the most interesting answers are already there, waiting to be connected. I'm hungry now. Going to seasrh the fridge.