What Are the Most Recent Search Trends Telling Us?
The most recent trends in the volume of Google searches and what they mean for disc golf growth in 2025
In The Relationship between Search Volume and Disc Golf Growth, I concluded that the volume of Google searches worldwide that included terms for disc golf appears to be highly correlated with changes in number PDGA active members and therefore, presumably, changes in the number of disc golf participants (i.e., disc golf growth). In summary, the relationship between search volume and number of disc golf participants seems to be as follows:
a flat trendline for the volume of searches indicates a steady (not increasing or decreasing) rate of growth in participation (i.e. a steady rate of increase (or a steady rate of decrease) in the number of participants)
an increase in the volume of searches indicates an increase in the rate of growth of participation (i.e. an increasing rate of increase (or decreasing rate of decrease) in the number of participants)
a decrease in the volume of searches indicates a decrease in the rate of growth of participation (i.e. a decreasing rate of increase (or increasing rate of decrease) in the number of participants); whether a decrease in the volume of searches indicates an actual decline in the number of participants depends on how long and steep the decrease in search volume is
This post explores the most recent trends in the volume of Google searches and what they probably meant for disc golf growth in 2024 and mean for disc golf growth in 2025.
Set forth below is the chart from The Relationship between Search Volume and Disc Golf Growth that shows both the volume of Google searches worldwide that included terms for disc golf from 2010 to 2024 (left scale, with the numbers being the percentage that the average monthly search volume during a year for searches for any of the top 5 terms for disc golf represented of the all-time highest monthly search volume for any of the terms during 2010-2024 (which happened to be “disc golf” in July 2021)) and the number of PDGA active members from 2010 to 2023 (right scale).
The decline in the volume of Google searches worldwide that included terms for disc golf worldwide from 2021 to 2023 correlated with a decline in the rate of growth of the number of PDGA active members during that time period but did not result in a decline in the number of PDGA active members. The further decline in the volume of Google searches worldwide that included terms for disc golf from 2023 to 2024 suggests that the rate of growth in the number of PDGA active members from 2023 to 2024 probably further declined from the rate of growth from 2022 to 2023. It is likely that the growth in number of PDGA active members was close to flat, perhaps slightly positive or perhaps slightly negative. Assuming that the percentage of disc golf participants worldwide who are PDGA active members is fairly constant, that suggests that the rate of growth of disc golf participation worldwide from 2023 to 2024 was also probably close to flat or perhaps slightly negative. If, as suggested in Analyzing Other Metrics for Disc Golf Growth, there is a slight lag between a change in the number of disc golf participants and a change in the number of PDGA active members, there is an increased likelihood that the number of disc golf participants worldwide actually declined slightly from 2023 to 2024.
To see if the decline in the volume of Google searches worldwide that included terms for disc golf has been slowing down or bottomed out, I compared the monthly search volumes for the past 12 months (July 2024-January 2025) against those for the prior 12 months (July 2023-January 2024). Set forth below is a chart of the differences in monthly search volumes between those two periods.
As can be seen, even in the most recent months, search volume is lower than it was for the corresponding month in the prior 12-month period. This suggests that the decline in the rate of growth (perhaps to negative growth) in the number of PDGA active members and the number of disc golf participants worldwide has not yet bottomed out and has continued into the early part of 2025. The one encouraging sign is that the search volume declines from prior year volumes seem to have been getting smaller in the past four months, perhaps suggesting that the period of search volume decline, and disc golf participation growth rate decline, may be ending soon, even if it hasn’t ended yet.
In the next post, I will explore what recent trends in the volume of Google searches that included for terms for disc golf suggest about differences in recent trends in the rate of growth of disc golf participation in the US versus the rest of the world.