Google trends: U2

[raft]

I've posted this to a Latin American forum yesterday. The results that came after a Google trends search for U2 really surprised me. Can this be used as an index of popularity? (I'm biased here, being an Argentine from Buenos Aires).
Google Trends: u2
Regions:
1. Ireland (obviously)
And then, what appears to be an acceptable top 9 of places -disregard the order- with big U2 fandom (now Australia, though)
2. Argentina (!?)
3. Italy
4. Chile
5. Portugal
6. Spain
7. Mexico
8. New Zealand
9. Brazil
10. Czech Republic

Cities:
1. Dublin, Ireland
2. Buenos Aires, Argentina (ok, I search a lot. he, he)
3. Mexico City, Mexico
4. Milan, Italy
5. Santiago, Chile
6. Augusta, Italy
7. Lisbon, Portugal
8. Sao Paulo, Brazil
9. Madrid, Spain
10. Amsterdam, Netherlands

 

[Ellay]

No UK or USA?

 

[raft]

I tried comparing U2 to Rolling Stones.
It is clear than the RS are nowhere more searched than in Argentina. That said, they came after U2.
Sorting By the RS you can see the tiny bar for U2 searches from the US.

Sorting by U2, the lads are much bigger in maby countries than RS. The margin in Argentina is one of the smallers

Throwing Colplay in there, they appear to be closer in popularity in Hispanic Latin America (Arg, Mex, Chl, Perú)

But now one can compete with Britney and Madonna:

 

[A stor]

Thanks for the info. This is interesting.

 

[Galeongirl]

Is this per capita or in total?

 

[Gilead12]

Comparing 04/05 to 09 makes me sad

 

[Irishteen]

Is this per capita or in total?

Per Capita or at least something similar I'd imagine

 

[Mrs. Garrison]

Comparing 04/05 to 09 makes me sad

why? its just a Google search.



maybe those people in 04/05...finally found what they were looking for

 

[runbyu1]

But now one can compete with Britney and Madonna:

Yeah but that's just because perverts are searching for Britney and Madonna Porn!

 

[raft]

Per Capita or at least something similar I'd imagine

(after reading the FAQ)

It's normalized by the amount of total google searches by each region/city/time.
Not that more Peruvians are looking for Coldplay than people in the US, but yes relative to the total searches for the country.

Talking that into account. Here's how they should decide which US cities to tour (but if the rumours are true , it not the method being use to consider the possible 2010 US leg )

 

[The Sad Punk]

Google Trends: u2

The 2 need to play at Hobart, evidently.

 

[Cactus Annie]

Try typing in "Michael Jackson"

How about "legal highs"

 

[raft]

it's a difficult query as the news of MJ death is already in the chart , but looking at the data, the relationship for the last years seemed to be madonna 1.0 / u2 0.8 / MJ 0.6

 

[doctorwho]

Five or more years ago, not as many people had access to the internet, and especially broadband internet. In 2000 people still used dial-up services. While I'm sure that's still true to some extent, most everyone has DSL or cable or, if nothing else, a fast connection at work.

As a result, there will be more searches and Google data will change faster (Yahoo also tracks and one can see tremendous daily spikes due to the simplest of news). Once U2 starts touring in those areas, even in the U.S., I'm sure there'll be more spikes. I bet when U2 were on Letterman all week and the new album came out, there were big spikes in the U.S. for them then. But those have long since faded.

 

[gman]

I have difficulty understanding why UK and USA dont feature in these results. Also...the biggest search language wise, is croatian....a country with a population of 4.5M? Surely there are more english speaking people performing searches given that the UK has 15 times the poplation...... Not to mention the US!

 

[coolian2]

the toowoomba chronicle is one of the spikes?

yeah, something isn't quite right there.

 

[raft]

I have difficulty understanding why UK and USA dont feature in these results. Also...the biggest search language wise, is croatian....a country with a population of 4.5M? Surely there are more english speaking people performing searches given that the UK has 15 times the poplation...... Not to mention the US!

Everything is normalized , shown relative to the total searches in each region, city, language and period.

 

[Cactus Annie]

Don't you find search engines so boastful? Look at me. I found 64,400,000 results and it took me 0.08 seconds. Aren't I clever?