United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, (Great) Britain in the US

I investigated a little bit further along the lines of my "United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain and Italy in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian" posts 1 and 2. This time, I faced off the same five European countries but only among US Googlers:



France was no. 1, followed by Italy. It was however odd that the UK with whom Americans share a common language and are culturally and politically closely linked, came in dead last. As mentioned before, France's recurring summer peak was due to the Tour de France. Let's have a look at the state rankings for interest in the five countries, beginning with the UK:



Among this smaller volume of searches, DC, New York and Illinois stood out. Mississippi came last. How about France?



The top 3 consisted of DC, New York and California. South Dakota came in dead last. Just like with the UK, the political and trade ties probably pushed DC to the top. Louisiana, which you would expect to be interested in France, didn't make the top 10. Next, Germany:



Michigan led for this country, followed by Wisconsin and DC. Could this have something to do with a larger share of German-Americans in the first two states? Louisiana thought the least about Germany. Then came Spain:



New York led, New Jersey was a close second and third was Florida. The pattern seemed to correlate with the distribution of Hispanics in the US. Oklahoma ended up last. Finally, Italy:



For Italy, it was New York, Connecticut and then New Jersey. South Dakota didn't care much for the Mediterranean "boot." I was still puzzled about the low score for the UK though: maybe "the United Kingdom" was a tad too bureaucratic a term, not what people type into the Google search box? I tested this theory by comparing the constituent parts of the UK:



England blew the competition as well as the UK out of the water: more than 13 times higher Google-popularity than the UK. Northern Ireland barely registered. A caveat however was apparent when looking at the state rankings: the New England states made up the top 6, in other words, a lot of the hits may be for the New England region rather than England.


One more test: I faced off Britain, Great Britain (also often used terms) and the UK:



Britain was tops, Great Britain was last. The term Great Britain—from which the automobile country code "GB" is derived—covers England, Wales and Scotland. The full name of the UK is actually the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Why is Britain "great"? Originally, "greater" distinguished it from "lesser" Britain, i.e., Brittany in France. Remember William the Conqueror and the French connections? Later, it was used to cement the union of England and Scotland. Britain in its proper use is then the geographical entity of the island containing Scotland, Wales and England. Of course, common usage conflates all this ;-)

United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain and Italy in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian (Part 2)

In part 1, I faced off the search volumes of five versions of the names of the five big European countries. Today, I compared each time four European countries plus the US as far as the Google-popularity of a fifth European country was concerned. I started with the UK:



The UK was most popular in Spain, twice as much as in the US and Italy. France and Germany closed the rankings. My guess would be that this was caused by the larger contingent of British tourists in Spain. Note that I put the US in place of the search-term country. After all, a country name being most popular in its own territory didn't need proving but a comparison with the search patterns in the US could provide a nice study in contrast. Next, France:



France was most popular by far in the UK—a sentiment that was not returned as we saw above... Americans were the least interested in France. All searchers though were most interested in the summer: Tour de France time! Just like with the UK, popularity is generally in decline. Then came Germany:



All Europeans were about as much interested in this country, the US lagged a bit behind. Italy narrowly won this one. The 2006 World Cup soccer was again clearly visible, esp. in soccer-crazy Spain and Italy. So, how about Spain?



The interest in this country was staggered perfectly, from the top score in the UK (returning the favor; see above under the UK) to the least interested Italians. Americans came out one step above Italy. I wonder whether the UK trend line showed their vacation season, beginning at Christmas and lasting through the summer. The French and to a lesser extent the Germans also vacation in Spain but mostly in the summer only. Strangely, Americans were less into Spain during the summer... Finally, Italy:



One more time, the Europeans more or less agreed while the US lagged behind some. The summer 2006 peak was caused by the Azurri (Italian national soccer team) winning the World Cup in Germany.

United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain and Italy in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian (Part 1)

Today I faced off the five most populous countries of the European Union but not against each other. Instead, I investigated the Google-popularity of their names in the five main languages. Note that I kept the order of the languages the same for each country: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian. Let's start with the United Kingdom:



As expected, the English version of the name was by far the most common but was also diminishing in volume at a rapid and sustained pace. Spanish came in second; Italian, French and German barely registered in comparison—remember that the numbers on these Google Insights for Search graphs are relative, not absolute, i.e., not reflecting real volume numbers but only how the different search terms differ in search volume. Next, France:



We had two complications here: the English and French versions of the name were identical and so were the Spanish and Italian ones. In both cases, I kept the two languages on the graph even though only one of the trend lines was visible, that line being the sum total of the two languages' search volume. That way, the language color codes didn't change from graph to graph. Anyway, France was king and it didn't matter whether the French or the English version was what drove this line because the other three languages were so small in volume that they would have been behind even if it were possible to split up the English and French searches. The Tour de France cycling extravaganza produced the annual summer peak (see also my August 9, 2008 post). How about Germany?



This time, I had solid evidence for the native tongue normally being on top: Deutschland bested Germany. Both were decreasing through time. The one time English won out was in June 2006 when even Italian almost caught up with German. The reason: the World Cup soccer took place in Germany that year, mostly in June. The smaller uptick later on was Euro 2008, the European soccer championship. Do we need anymore proof that soccer is king in Germany? :-) This in contrast to France where cycling is king (see above). Next, Spain:



The pattern continued: the native language bested English and both declined through time. Italians had little affinity with Spain. Finally, I analyzed Italy:



One more time we had an "identical twin": Italia is both the Italian and the Spanish name for the country. Of course then, Italian + Spanish bested English. Just like with Spain, there was at least some search volume from the other languages too: I wonder if this might be due to both countries being favorite tourist destinations?

Update: Don't forget to read part 2.

Food & Drink Searches in the US, Canada, Germany, Russia, Italy, France, Brazil, Japan and India

Today I looked at Google searches about food and drink collectively by a series of countries. What is more, I used the option to show trend lines for each year which should bring out seasonalities. I started with the US:



The two high points of the year were Thanksgiving (fourth Thursday of November) and Christmas. Next, Canada:



In Canada, Thanksgiving is celebrated on a different date: the second Monday of October. This was reflected in the trend lines. Surely, Christmas will also be the gastronomical top in Germany?



Indeed. Note the more gradual buildup toward Weihnachten though. Also, Easter was becoming more pronounced here. That holiday follows a complicated set of rules involving a lunisolar calendar and fell in the Western rite of Christianity on different dates: April 11, 2004; March 27, 2005; April 16, 2006; April 8, 2007; March 23, 2008. Let's go to a prime representative of the Eastern rite of Christianity: Russia.



Primarily because the Eastern rite doesn't follow the Gregorian calendar but instead still uses the Julian one, their Christmases do not always coincide with the Western ones: April 11, 2004; May 1, 2005; April 23, 2006; April 8, 2007; April 27, 2008. We did see a small increase at that time in 2004, 2007 and 2008 but not in the other years. It seemed like Easter wasn't as big a deal as in the Western rite. Christmas trumped everything. Next, Italy:



This displayed a more "multipolar" seasonality: Christmas and Easter, sure, but also mid-February and more. I guess it goes to show that Italians like to celebrate on many occasions—good for them! How about the other stereotypical bon vivants, France?



Besides Christmas, a peak in mid-August also showed. But more interesting was that the search volume went up dramatically in March 2008 as compared with the previous years. Odd. Off to South America I went to investigate Brazil.



Easter was almost as important as Christmas for Brazilians. I wondered what the mid-June increase stood for. It turns out that June 12 is the Dia dos Namorados, a kind of Valentine's Day. Note the more or less increasing search volume through the years. How about Japan?



Even though this country isn't really much Christian, Yuletide was most noticeable in the seasonal trends. It has become kind of a secular, imported holiday. Second most important was early June which I wasn't able to link to any specific holiday or festivity. Does anybody have an idea? Finally, I did an analysis of India:



I couldn't observe any noticeable seasonal peaks in Google searches for food and drink. However, there was a remarkable peak in September 2007. Maybe this had to do with India winning the inaugural ICC World Twenty20 championship? I really don't know. Maybe somebody can help on this one too.

One more thing: I did a quick tally of the top 3 search terms in the analyzed countries, totaling all the occurrences:



Obviously, most people search the internet for recipes or for restaurants. Sushi occurred in the top 3 only in Russia (not Japan!), wine in Germany (not France!). Ramen though was only popular in Japan.

Copyright vs. Trademark vs. Royalties vs. Intellectual Property in the UK, the US, Germany, Belgium and France

Today, a non-US-elections-related post... I faced off copyright-related terms: copyright (droit d'auteur/Urheberrecht/auteursrecht(en)) vs. trademark (marque déposée/Marke/eingetragenes Ware/handelsmerk/merk) vs. Royalties (redevance(s)/Abgabe(n)) vs. intellectual property (propriété intellectuelle/geistiges Eigentum/intellektuelles Eigentum/intellectueel eigendom). I did this for the UK, the US, Germany, Belgium and France. I included the translation of the terms in French, German and Dutch in the Google Insights for Search analysis when applicable so as to get a more accurate picture. First, I faced off the different countries for copyright:



There was the most interest in copyright in the UK, the least in France. A November 2004 peak in the UK could be observed: I don't know why. Over the 2004-now time span, Google-popularity went down in every country however. How about trademark?



This time, Belgians were the most interested, the French again the least. The UK was markedly less into trademark than copyright while Belgium was vice versa. I wonder if this had to do with different legislative traditions? It could also be that Marke and merk are too generic. I redid this analysis without those two terms:



This did change the situation. The US were now clearly the most interested in trademark and Germany and Belgium ended up much lower. Again, all countries' trend lines declined through time. Next, royalties:



France was no. 1 and this was substantially due to a big peak in October 2005. This time too, I wasn't able to ascertain why. There is no real Dutch term for royalties, the English word is commonly used. The US scored the lowest for this term. Looking at the evolution of the trend lines January 1, 2004 through now, the downward trend was esp. noticeable in France but the UK, the US and Germany also saw declines. Belgium on the other hand saw a slight increase. Finally, let's look at the intellectual property graph:



The US and the UK basically shared the lead while German Googlers cared the least for geistiges Eigentum. All countries lost interest between 2004 and now.

It seemed to me that obtaining country graphs for the four terms together would be useful. I started with the UK:



Copyright towered over the three other terms, even when not counting the big November 2004 peak. Next, the US:



Copyright again ruled, intellectual property was the least interesting. Let's look at Germany next:



Copyright and trademark were at the top, intellectual property hardly showed. However, when we took out the too generic term Marke, the graph changed drastically:



Copyright was alone in charge now, both trademark and intellectual property held hardly any interest. Then I analyzed Belgium:



Trademark was no. 1, intellectual property was in the doldrums. I eliminated merk again:



Copyright dominated while trademark almost disappeared; even intellectual property scored higher. At long last, I investigated the data for France.



Royalties won out in la douce France, trademark hardly existed. Intellectual property held some interest.

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.

7-Day Top Searches in Germany, Brazil, the US, Australia and Japan

Using Google Insights for Search's Download as CSV feature, I made a spreadsheet of the top searches for the last 7 days in five countries. For reasons that are unclear to me, the data yielded the top 50 for Germany, Brazil and Australia but only the top 44 for the US and Japan. I established a list of all the unique search terms and made a stacked graph using the standardized values for each country. It's a little big as there's a very long tail, in other words, there isn't a lot of overlap.



I realize the graph is hard to read but Blogger somehow reduced the size. Here are the search terms with their respective total values:

1. youtube 375
   
2. yahoo 290
   
3. google 230
   
4. ebay 180
   
5. myspace 175
   
6. facebook 165
   
7. hotmail 130
   
8. msn 125
   
9. you tube 115
   
10. orkut 100
    
11. jogos 100
    
12. games 100
    
13. wikipedia 90
    
14. maps 70
    
15. gmail 60
    
16. my 55
    
17. craigslist 55
    
18. gmx 50
    
19. amazon 50
    
20. weather 45
    
21. mixi 45
    
22. dictionary 45
    
23. wetter 40
    
24. web 40
    
25. news 40
    
26. 2ch 40
    
27. 価格 40
    
28. test 35
    
29. 楽天 35
    
30. 地図 35
    
31. white pages 30
    
32. web.de 30
    
33. uol 30
    
34. telefonbuch 30
    
35. spiele 30
    
36. real estate 30
    
37. globo 30
    
38. bild 30
    
39. ニコニコ 30
    
40. yahoo mail 25
    
41. tradutor 25
    
42. terra 25
    
43. studivz 25
    
44. mapquest 25
    
45. cnn 25
    
46. baixaki 25
    
47. 天気 25
    
48. westpac 20
    
49. wer kennt wen 20
    
50. tv guide 20
    
51. schülervz 20
    
52. routenplaner 20
    
53. qantas 20
    
54. mobile 20
    
55. leo 20
    
56. hotmail.com 20
    
57. frases 20
    
58. 譬ｪ萓｡ 20
    
59. bebo 20
    
60. anz 20
    
61. ヤフー 20
    
62. yellow pages 15
    
63. yahoo.com 15
    
64. wkw 15
    
65. where is 15
    
66. walmart 15
    
67. vivo 15
    
68. utube 15
    
69. tre 15
    
70. telstra 15
    
71. target 15
    
72. spiegel 15
    
73. seek 15
    
74. red tube 15
    
75. optus 15
    
76. oi 15
    
77. nhk 15
    
78. nab 15
    
79. mensagens 15
    
80. icq 15
    
81. hi5 15
    
82. goo 15
    
83. freenet 15
    
84. firefox 15
    
85. espn 15
    
86. detran 15
    
87. db 15
    
88. commonwealth bank 15
    
89. claro 15
    
90. caixa 15
    
91. big day out 15
    
92. bank of america 15
    
93. asx 15
    
94. aol 15
    
95. 鄙ｻ險ｳ 15
    
96. 螟ｩ豌嶺ｺ亥 ｱ 15
    
97. ノーベル賞 15
    
98. vagalume 10
    
99. tse 10
    
100. trading post 10
     
101. t-online 10
     
102. the age 10
     
103. tchibo 10
     
104. runescape 10
     
105. receita federal 10
     
106. postbank 10
     
107. otto 10
     
108. o2 10
     
109. ninemsn 10
     
110. netbank 10
     
111. net 10
     
112. myspace.com 10
     
113. myspace layouts 10
     
114. msnbc 10
     
115. miniclip 10
     
116. mercado livre 10
     
117. meinvz 10
     
118. jogos online 10
     
119. jogos de meninas 10
     
120. jetstar 10
     
121. jappy 10
     
122. jal 10
     
123. ig 10
     
124. hoyts 10
     
125. home depot 10
     
126. herald sun 10
     
127. google maps 10
     
128. gmx.de 10
     
129. 驛ｵ萓ｿ逡ｪ蜿ｷ 10
     
130. dmm 10
     
131. dicionario 10
     
132. deutsche bank 10
     
133. dax 10
     
134. das Örtliche 10
     
135. currency converter 10
     
136. concursos 10
     
137. club penguin 10
     
138. bom 10
     
139. bol 10
     
140. bigpond 10
     
141. bate papo 10
     
142. barack obama 10
     
143. börse 10
     
144. au 10
     
145. aol.com 10
     
146. ana 10
     
147. americanas 10
     
148. afl 10
     
149. 大和生命 10
     
150. 繝九さ繝九さ蜍慕判 10
     
151. youtube.com 5
     
152. you tube.com 5
     
153. xnxx 5
     
154. webkinz 5
     
155. tv programm 5
     
156. tim 5
     
157. southwest airlines 5
     
158. schuelervz 5
     
159. photobucket 5
     
160. pandora 5
     
161. oi torpedo 5
     
162. nikoniko 5
     
163. my space 5
     
164. msn.com 5
     
165. messenger 5
     
166. letras de musicas 5
     
167. kboing 5
     
168. jra 5
     
169. itau 5
     
170. horoscopo 5
     
171. gyao 5
     
172. google.com 5
     
173. globo.com 5
     
174. g1 5
     
175. fernsehprogramm 5
     
176. facebook login 5
     
177. 貍ｫ逕ｻ鬢ｨ 5
     
178. deutsche bahn 5
     
179. cpz 5
     
180. cifras 5
     
181. caixa economica 5
     
182. bradesco 5
     
183. 遏ｳ逕ｰ譛ｪ譚･ 5
     
184. 邱呈婿諡ｳ 5
     
185. 菴仙ｷ晄\･萓ｿ 5
     
186. 荳画ｵｦ蜥檎ｾｩ 5
     
187. ユーチューブ 5
     
188. 繝ｦ繝九け繝ｭ 5
     
189. 繧｢繧ｲ繧ｵ繧ｲ 5
     
190. 繧ｬ繝ｳ繝\繝  00 5
     

The social networking sites, search, Wikipedia, ... the usual suspects are internationally Google-popular. I must admit I'm a little baffled by the number of people searching for "Google" in the Google search engine: maybe these came from in-browser search boxes? Yahoo mail and weather were only searched in the US. Only Australians typed in games a lot. There are more examples of interesting/puzzling details. Temporarily, the full-scale graph can be viewed here.

Toyota vs. General Motors vs. Volkswagen vs. Ford vs. Honda

I faced off the largest car manufacturers in the world this time. These would be in order of number of cars produced (2007):

1. Toyota (incl. Lexus + Scion + Daihatsu + Isuzu)
   
2. General Motors (incl. Buick + Cadillac + Chevrolet + Daewoo + GMC + Holden + Hummer + Opel + Pontiac + Saab + Saturn + Vauxhall + Wuling + Oldsmobile)
   
3. Volkswagen (incl. Audi + Bentley + Bugatti + Škoda + SEAT + Scania + MAN)
   
4. Ford (incl. Lincoln + Mercury + Aston Martin + Volvo + Mazda + Jaguar + Land Rover)
   
5. Honda
   

I let Google Insights for Search compare these sets of names. So what was the result?



The ranking so to speak in Google -popularity worldwide was different from the production-numbers list above:

1. Ford
   
2. General Motors
   
3. Honda
   
4. Toyota
   
5. Volkswagen
   

The discrepancy was most marked for Toyota and Ford that switched places. Actually, Ford was ahead of everyone else. The latter were constantly jostling for position in a narrow band. Most everyone declined through the years except for Volkswagen and Honda. Let us look at some country-specific graphs, beginning with the US:



There was a bit more seasonality here. Otherwise, the only major difference lay in Volkswagen's poor performance and the fact that Honda was the only car company to increase. Note however that "less than 25% of searches containing 'volkswagen+audi…' are categorized as Automotive." Still, I couldn't remove the Automotive filter because a few of the terms had significant non-automobile meanings, e.g., SEAT = seat. What about Germany?



Locally-headquartered Volkswagen was tops, then followed Ford and General Motors. Honda and esp. Toyota were stuck at the bottom. Honda and Volkswagen were the only ones to grow. Next, the United Kingdom:



Ford was solidly in the lead, followed by Volkswagen. All companies declined. Let's make one more graph, this time using data from Japanese (English-savvy) web surfers:



Honda and Toyota were clear leaders on their home turf. Volkswagen and General Motors were struggling. Still, General Motors slightly grew overall. Honda and Ford saw the biggest improvement.