How Search Data Analytics Reveal Major Crises in Brazil

Search engine data is extremely powerful in assessing the potential of emerging markets & reveal local trends. Also, these data can be used to diagnose socioeconomic issues.

Looking at insurance search trends is a great way to gauge citizens’ degree of worry.

Brazil: a country hit by multiple crises

With limited governmental measures to counter the Covid-19 pandemic, Brazil has recorded a significant amount of deaths compared to other developed & emerging countries.

As the population divided, Brazil also experienced a huge political crisis in March 2021, when Brazil’s highest military officials resigned in response to President Bolsonaro’s attempts to politicize the armed forces.

Pandemic, rampant economic issues & increased political instability drove inflation & even brought recession.

After a year of respite in 2020 due to lockdown, murders have surged again – especially in Brazil’s northern states. In June 2021, Manaus authorities even shut down schools and suspended public transportation, following the death of a cartel leader.

Hit by Covid-19, inflation & growing criminality, Brazil has faced numerous uncertainty over the last years. A -4% recession has been recorded in 2020, while growth should remain below 1% in 2021.

While hit by these multiple crises cast a darker shadow over their future, Brazilians hopefully do not give up. In 2021 they have proved their extreme resilience with a record of job creation & private social initiatives. That’s how we saw the emergence of a new stock market … owned by favelas community leaders!

Search data revealed a surge for private insurance in 2021

We used our search listening platform to record a surge in demand for insurance policies in all largest states & cities in the wake of the economic crisis.

It shows that citizens tend to look for private safety nets when their State is not seen as efficient enough to provide support and protection.

We took a look at more than 200 search queries revealing interest in insurance products:

seguro de caro
seguro cellular
seguro viagem
seguro residencial
…

All these expressions were found by scanning all websites of major Brazilian insurance companies.

Then all similar search queries were clustered by semantic proximity to analyse search trends over time for each insurance market segment (car, cellphone, residential…).

Car insurance is the most sought-after insurance product in Brazil (36%), ahead of residential (22.1%) and cellphone (16.6%).

Local search trends: the demand for cellphone insurance is rising in major cities

Search results are available at many geographic levels, including country, region, department, city, and, in some cases, district.

We considered all Brazilian states to unveil local affinity, which is the number of searches for 100k population. Using local affinity is useful in order to spot territories with specific expectations or, in our instance, more considerable difficulties.

When considering local affinity for cellphone insurance, we notice that Rio de Janeiro comes first, just behind Sao Paulo – though there are twice more search queries for cellphone insurance in Sao Paulo. But of course, there is also a much larger population – which explains why the local affinity (search volume for 100k population) is lower than in Rio de Janeiro.

Search data are good to compare local affinity for multiple products and reveal local consumer insights.

By looking closely at results for local affinity by segment, we can notice a few local outliers:

Funeral in Rio de Janeiro
Travel in Federal District
Pets in Sao Paulo
Car in Espirito Santo
Rural in Parana
…

The case of Brazil is just one example to illustrate that socioeconomic issues can be revealed from search engines when looking at online search trends for related markets – such as insurance.