Which Sport Rules on Search?

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Which Sport Rules on Search?

I've been meaning to post on this for awhile, but you know how things go.

Anyway, Google Trends is pretty fun to play with. Being in Canada in hockey playoff season, I thought it would be interesting to compare the big 4 sports in North America.

Here's the results:

So...over all Football rules in terms of search volume, with very regular peaks in basketball during playoffs.

On the top graph, hockey doesn't look too impressive, but check out the search volumes in the cities. Hockey rules! Even in Minneapolis, the lone US city to make the list, they're still looking for hockey. To be honest, we consider Minnesotans honourary (notice the Canadian spelling?) Canadians anyway.

Winnipeg is die hard hockey heartland, and they haven't had a NHL team in 10 years (the Jets moved to Phoenix and became the Coyotes).

I'm not sure whether to be proud of our national obsession, or a little embarassed.

And in the interest of being topical, here's how searchers cast their votes in April (the latest month available) for American Idol contestants. Hmm..this was almost a full month before the finals. Could search be the crystal ball for reality TV?

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Print | posted @ Thursday, May 25, 2006 6:04 AM

Comments on this entry:

# re: Which Sport Rules on Search?

by Stephen Munday at 5/25/2006 1:59 PM

"Football" is the sport known in the US as "soccer", and in the rest of the world as the sport where the "foot" and the "ball" are in regular contact. Hence the distorted stats.

There is a lesson here for when optimizing a site or buying Adwords: Make sure you check out what other meanings or implications your keywords have before going after the supposed "big traffic" they will bring. After all, a bunch of soccer fans are not going to be happy if they find the top result for "football" goes to an American football site, even if it is number 1 for the keyword. That site is sure to have a high bounce rate.

Remember, football fans, not long now to the World Cup on starting June 9th!

re: Which Sport Rules on Search?

by Gord Hotchkiss at 5/25/2006 2:27 PM

Excellent point Stephen, and one I completely missed in my North American-centric view of things. Thanks for pointing it out!

# re: Which Sport Rules on Search?

by PuzZler at 5/26/2006 12:13 PM

Gord, wait until the soccer championship starts in about 15 days... that will show the peak there!