They told us how much butter each occasion uses. Two of the three numbers were wrong.
A premium international dairy brand planned its US business around three occasions — baking, cooking, and butter eaten with food — and gave us its own estimate of how much butter each one uses. We checked those estimates against what people actually do.
searches a month are people working out how to divide a stick into spoons and grams
of all the stick-of-butter searches we measured are that one question
reviews and conversations read to see how people describe amounts
| Occasion | Their estimate | What we found | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baking | 1 whole stick | Anything from a little to a great deal | Not one number |
| Cooking | 1 tablespoon | Closer to 1½ tablespoons | Too low |
| Butter with food | 2 teaspoons | Closer to 1 teaspoon | Too high |
Three occasions kept. Two of the three numbers inside them changed.
Where each correction came from
Baking
The single biggest search about butter sticks is how many tablespoons are in one, at 34,475 searches a month — a question that only exists because recipes ask for parts of a stick. Yet when people write about sticks, they mention using two or more far more often than one: 134 mentions against 63. One number cannot cover both.
Cooking
People use spoon measurements 487 times across everything we read. And the cooking they are actually searching for — browned butter, clarified butter, flavoured butter — takes two to four tablespoons a batch, not one.
Butter with food
Spreading is the most talked-about of the three occasions: 3,220 mentions, against 1,932 for baking. And within that writing, careful words like ‘thin layer’ and ‘sparingly’ beat generous ones like ‘slather’ by 57 to 41.
The client kept its three occasions and changed the numbers inside them. We also refused to multiply our amounts by their count of occasions — the two are measured in different ways, and the answer would have been a figure neither side could defend. Search shows where people stop to think — and nobody researches buttering toast.
US butter market · five rounds of research · English and Spanish · 2022–2026. Everything here comes from what people searched for and wrote after buying, not from sales data. Their words are described, not quoted. Client name withheld.
URCHIN INTELLIGENCE · THE SCIENCE OF REVEALED REALITY
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