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Hydroponic Insights from Google Trends · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hello and welcome back to Hydroponics Daily. We
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  previously did an episode with my colleague Matthew about trends in the hydroponic
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  sector in 2025 and I thought I'd do a follow-up looking at Google Trends because
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  Google Trends can give you the data about what people have been searching for for about 20 years.
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  So it's a really good indicator of sort of where the
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  trends are going and obviously you can't predict the future with
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  this just as you can't with stocks and shares but it gives you a
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  good indication of say the sentiment
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  in the industry and from the general
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  public about where it's going so i just put it
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  into google trends hydroponics and obviously there
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  was a big peak in interest worldwide and
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  both in the uk and us during covid understandable there
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  was a big boom in hydroponics but then
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  i put in germination because germination
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  should be a standard search term
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  that people are searching for and it won't
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  be specific to hydroponics it
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  would be horticulture in general and that
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  that shows some really interesting findings obviously there
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  was a peak every april because unlike hydroponics germination is
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  largely governed by seasonality and
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  people are growing in the gardens and on farms and nurseries and
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  in schools and things like that so there's a big peak in april every
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  year and then obviously the biggest peak was during COVID
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  pandemic and that coincided
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  with spring early summer in most
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  countries and so yeah there was a big peak there but what the difference was
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  between hydroponics and germination was that after COVID there was a steady
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  decline in hydroponics and this has continued to this year and if you look at.
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  Germination that actually had a bump during COVID a really big bump the biggest bump it's ever had.
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  But then sustained much, the baseline was much higher than pre-COVID.
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  So people have got into gardening during COVID and that has been largely maintained.
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  So that's really interesting. Whereas hydroponics has suffered after COVID,
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  but germination hasn't.
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  Now, I'm not sure what you can do with that information. However,
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  I always think of business a bit like sailing a ship.
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  You can sail into the wind if you want, but it's hard if the wind is going against
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  you. It's always easier if the wind's with you.
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  So pivoting and things like this away from areas which are struggling might
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  be an option, or you might think of sitting it out until the wind dies down
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  and then you've got less competitors around and things like that. So that's interesting.
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  Then I started to search for some other topics on Google Trends and I looked
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  at HPS, high pressure sodium lights versus LED.
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  And that was really interesting because obviously you'd expect LEDs to really
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  be increasing in search terms, but there was more to it than that.
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  LEDs actually had a peak during COVID and even though we've seen loads more
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  cheaper LEDs come the market in hydroponics, there's still nowhere near that
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  level that it was during COVID.
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  Whereas HPS actually had its peak in 2009.
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  And now there is nothing.
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  No one's searching for HPS or sodium lights. So that's really interesting.
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  And then I went and looked at systems. So DWC versus NFT.
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  And that was really interesting because nft versus
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  dwc they mirror each other so they're not
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  one is more popular than the other but that wasn't the case originally until
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  2008 nft was the dominant system and hardly anyone was searching for dwc then
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  something happened in 2008 maybe a new company came on board that was pushing
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  dwc and there ever since then they matched each other So that's really interesting.
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  So from 2004 to 2008, NFT.
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  I was expecting NFT to be less popular than it actually is, and it was quite popular.
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  But then I put in, started searching for aeroponics versus NFT.
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  And aeroponics was massive compared to NFT.
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  And that's really interesting because you don't see, like commercially,
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  aeroponics is not as big as NFT. So there are companies that are trying to.
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  Commercialize aeroponics and that are doing a really good job like um
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  let us let us grow in the uk but let
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  us grow and then but still i
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  would have thought nft would have dominated that but no aeroponics is
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  massive i guess because aeroponics is just cool people are
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  searching for it they want to do some research on it so aeroponics
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  massive so that's something to if you're in
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  hydroponics and you're developing systems that's something to look at and then
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  i thought what about aeroponics versus aquaponics well
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  aquaponics blew aeroponics out the water and that was
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  even by far the most searched term and aquaponics
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  had its biggest peak in 2013 something happened
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  in 2013 that caused loads of people
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  to research aquaponics i don't know what
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  that is but that's that's really interesting so if
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  you're interested in playing around with google trends just type google
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  trends into google and you can put various search terms
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  in i always like to do it to search my competitors versus
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  my own company and see who's the biggest on
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  search terms and things like that can get a bit demoralizing when someone
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  else blows you completely out of the water and it can be quite um nice when
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  you see that you're you're being searched far more than your competitors so
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  you can use it for that you can use it for all sorts of things see see where
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  the trends are if you're looking to develop a new product for hydroponics then
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  you can see you know where it's heading, should we say.
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  I mean, obviously with a pinch of salt because you don't know what's around the corner.
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  So that's been Hydroponics Daily for today, Google Trends. If you'd like to
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  hear more of things like this, then make sure you click the follow button on
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  your podcast provider of choice so you don't miss an episode.
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  Thank you very much for listening to today and see you again tomorrow.