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A year ago I came across some interesting statistics available through Google Trends showing, for example, how Pakistan lead the league table on the search for “sex” and “terrorism”. A year on I decided to revisit and see how the world changed (or not!).

Keyword: sex

Last year we saw Pakistan topping the country ranking on the search for “sex”. This year, however, Google seems to be censoring them, because they do not show on the list at all, even when you look for historical data for the same period last year.

2006:

2007:

Also interesting the same censoring seems to be happening with “Iran” as they were 3rd last year and no where to be seen this time around. Egypt and Viet Nam now take first and second place. India increased from 6th to 3rd and Turkey raised from 9th to 4rd place. For the first time the Central and Eastern European regions showing on the top 10 with Poland and Romania making an entry in 5th and 6th place respectively. Interesting…

Keyword: Terrorism

2006:

2007:

Not many changes here. Pakistan still tops the list followed by the Philippines with Singapure, Australia and India swapping places with each other to make the top 5. UK and US still show decent interest, no surprises here.

Keyword: Education

Pakistan once again vanishes from the top 10. Are they no longer interested in Education or is the Google search historical data being censored again? New Zealand makes a strong climb to number 2 and South Africa disappears from the top 10 completely.

2006:

2007:

Keyword: Money

2006:

2007:

New Zealand must have found all the money it wanted because it is no longer number 2, not even making an appearance on the top 10. UK, Australia and the US still lead the table quickly followed by Canada and India similar to was it was a year ago. Sweden drops from the table giving place to Italy to make, just about, in number 10.

Keyword: Weapons

Interesting. The UK drops significantly from number 1 to number 5, leaving Australia, New Zealand the US as the top 3 and Canada as number 4, up 2 from number 6 last year. Finland finally shows in the top 10 and passes Sweden making it to number 6.

2006:

2007:

Keyword: Religion

2006:

2007:

South America and “Christianised” countries still dominate the top 10 table in search for spiritual enlightenment, with the perhaps surprising entry to numbers 9 and 10 of the UK and Sweden.

Keyword: Poker

2006:

2007:

The US ban on online poker surely makes a difference in search frequency, as it did to players. It dropped from number 5 to number 10, with the Scandinavian countries surely dominating the top places. The UK follows the US trend and drops to number 9 whereas France moves from 10th to 4rd (if you’re looking for fish, make it poisson!)

Related posts:

• Google Trends: what the world is searching for
• Interest-based behavioural targeting cookies: What do they know about you?
• New web marketing strategy born?

This entry was posted on Friday, October 19th, 2007 at 11:14 pm and is filed under search. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.