{"id":757,"date":"2010-04-22T09:29:01","date_gmt":"2010-04-22T09:29:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/?p=757"},"modified":"2010-04-19T03:36:02","modified_gmt":"2010-04-19T03:36:02","slug":"just-how-bad-were-the-last-two-holiday-seasons-for-gift-cards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/?p=757","title":{"rendered":"Just how bad were the last two holiday seasons for gift cards?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Google trends is great for tracking the frequency of search terms over time.\u00a0 Reports from industry analists put gift card sales down only moderately (5%) for the last two holiday seasons, but searching Google Trends for &#8220;gift cards&#8221; gives us a different picture, with traffic declining what appears to be about 30-40% from the peak on 2007:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/viz-1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-758\" title=\"Google trends\" src=\"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/viz-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"580\" height=\"260\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/viz-1.png 580w, http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/viz-1-300x134.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 580px) 100vw, 580px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The search term &#8220;visa gift card&#8221; seems to have suffered even worse:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/viz.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-761\" title=\"Visa gift card\" src=\"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/viz.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"580\" height=\"260\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/viz.png 580w, http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/viz-300x134.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 580px) 100vw, 580px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The concept of selling unwanted gift cards however, has gone from non-existent in 2006 and continues to grow:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/viz-11.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-762\" title=\"sell gift cards\" src=\"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/viz-11.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"580\" height=\"260\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/viz-11.png 580w, http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/viz-11-300x134.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 580px) 100vw, 580px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Google trends is great for tracking the frequency of search terms over time.\u00a0 Reports from industry analists put gift card sales down only moderately (5%) for the last two holiday seasons, but searching Google Trends for &#8220;gift cards&#8221; gives us a different picture, with traffic declining what appears to be about 30-40% from the peak [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trends"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=757"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":760,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757\/revisions\/760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}