Australia vs. Europe vs. Africa vs. Asia vs. Antarctica

Today, I faced off the five continents except for (the) America(s)—the latter would distort everything due to the US commonly being called "America." Also, I used Australia instead of Oceania as that is the more common usage at least in the US; Oceania by the way only received an overall 1% anyway.



Australia was the clear winner of this Google-popularity contest even though it saw a continuing decline. The caveat of course being that the term coincides with a country which may not be "fair" to compare with real continent names (see America above). Europe was also losing "market share." Antarctica was really of little interest. The only time when there was a peak in any of the trend lines was at the end of 2004: the catastrophic tsunami in the Indian Ocean region caused Asia to get a bump.

Huricane vs. Tsunami vs. Earthquake vs. Tornado vs. Typhoon

With hurricane Gustav threatening to wreak havoc in Louisiana (and beyond) as I type this, I thought it might be time to face off natural disasters:


Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of tsunami in all years.
hurricane 1.40
tsunami 1.00
earthquake 0.60
tornado 0.40
typhoon 0.20

The calamitous Christmas 2004 tsunami swept all other disasters away... Nevertheless, hurricanes are much more often googled as they are far more common. As expected, they peak around this time of the year as they are a seasonal phenomenon, the most infamous example being hurricane Katrina which hit New Orleans almost exactly three years ago. A 2007-only graph shows a typical annual pattern:


Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of tsunami in 2007.
hurricane 2.40
tsunami 1.00
earthquake 1.10
tornado 1.10
typhoon 0.50