Weekdays in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and The Netherlands

Today I faced off the five weekdays in five European countries. Let's start with the UK:



Friday was on top, with an annual peak around Good Friday (typically in March or April). The less-represented Tuesday nevertheless also displayed an annual peak around Fat Friday (Mardi Gras) in February. Monday had a lone but impressive peak in May 2006: I have no clue why. Googlers in the UK were least interested in Thursday. Next, Germany, using the local names (as in all countries; but always in chronological order on the graph, to make comparisons easier).



The ranking in popularity of the weekdays is similar to the UK. No. 1, Freitag, showed a more even trend line though, no real peak for Good Friday. Mittwoch, however, had many serious peaks without a clear annual pattern emerging. Dienstag was dead last. The French days of the week faced off as follows:



They were pretty much all on the same base level though lundi especially had quite a few strong peaks, usually about in May. I suppose the May 2005 one could be related to referendum on the proposed new European constitution (Monday May 30). Mercredi was the overall loser. Now I went down southeast for the Italian stage of our little "Tour of Europe":



I included the unaccented variants of the days in the comparison as Google distinguishes them to a certain extent. The weekdays were more or less bundled together except for uneven trend lines for venerdì, martedì and lunedì especially. The reasons escape me. At the bottom we found mercoledì again. Then it was on to Spain:



This country had a profile unlike any of the others: all days were on similar flat, low levels of interest except for a humongous peak for jueves in July 2007. Again, I am at a loss to explain this anomaly. The least interesting day in Spain seemed to be miércoles but not by a meaningful margin. Finally, we looked into The Netherlands:



Vrijdag won this one. I venture that this is related to Good Friday again: look at the annual peaks. There was even a corollary annual donderdag small peak: Maundy Thursday (Witte Donderdag) perhaps? In Holland, dinsdag was the least interesting.