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Googling the NHL in the USA
by Alanah McGinley on 11/01/07 at 03:24 PM ET
Comments (10)
From NHLdigest.com,
I have created the following video to show yet another perspective on the popularity, or lack thereof, of the NHL in the United States.
In this video I use a tool created by Google, called Google Trends, that is used to graphically show the popularity of certain terms that are searched for on the Internet. Google Trends is very nice to use because it allows us to compare two terms against each other to determine which of the terms is most often searched for.
This video clearly shows that “Nothing” is more popular than the NHL as a search term used in the United States. This is absolutely embarrassing for me as a hockey fan.
continued…
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*thanks to a KK reader for the heads up on the link
Filed in: NHL Media | KK Hockey | Permalink
Comments
Yes, but I’ll bet they both get smoked by “Britney Spears.”
What that says about people is even scarier!
Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 11/01/07 at 04:16 PM ET
Maybe you guys need to be reminded of the other way of looking at it—I found an optimistic way of looking at the Yahoo! search terms a few months ago when acknowledging the power of Jessica Simpson in the NHL. 
Posted by Alanah McGinley from British Columbia on 11/01/07 at 04:25 PM ET
At least we can honestly say now that nothing is more popular in the US than Hockey. I wonder if anything is more popular than football.
Posted by Hockey1919 from Montreal on 11/01/07 at 05:14 PM ET
This is crap, nothing is a far more popular search term than you make it out to be. Here is a link for NHL, nothing, NFL:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=NHL,+nothing,+NFL&ctab=0
While the NFL does beat the NHL, it isn’t blowing it out of the water. And their are many periods of time where the word “nothing” beats the NFL as well. And for the “news” results, the word nothing trounces both the NHL and NFL.
Here is a chart for the “big 4” leagues
http://www.google.com/trends?q=NFL,+NHL,+MLB,+NBA&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
The NHL actually appears to do just as well, if not better, than MLB.
Finally, for the sports themseleves (Football, Hockey, Basketball, Baseball):
http://www.google.com/trends?q=Football,+Hockey,+Baseball,+Basketball&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
Football is king, the other 3 are all right on top of each other. An interesting concept, but your analysis is deeply flawed.
Posted by Darrell on 11/01/07 at 05:20 PM ET
this is not really a good way to analyze, and I in particular don’t find it embarrassing..
Do you fellow NHL fans use the term NHL when doing a search? I often search on player or team names, but I can’t recall once searching for “NHL” in any combination.
Here is a better comparison (nfl, nba, nhl):
http://www.google.com/trends?q=nhl,+nfl,+nba&ctab=0&geo=US&geor=all&date=ytd&sort=0
This search is over the last 12 months.
Now look at the graph, does it show the number of searches involved? no..
For all we know this could be 3000 vs. 5000 vs. 4000 ...
And why is Virginia number 10 in terms of states searching for NHL…
Posted by canesice on 11/01/07 at 07:11 PM ET
As most of these comments point out, “NHL” actually performs comparably with “NBA”, “NFL” and especially “MLB”, when compared to searches for “nothing” (and probably any other noun as common as the word “nothing”). Plus, NHL fans are the most tech savvy of all sports, and are clearly never going to Google the word “NHL”—what would the point of such a search be? We know where to go for our hockey info (i.e. http://www.kuklaskorner.com!) and don’t need to Google our League’s name in order to find it—only dumbass basketball fans do apparently!
Posted by Alex from NY on 11/01/07 at 10:37 PM ET
Hockey is more popular than nothing.
Porn is more popular than everything. What a shocker
And in the oldie but goodie category, Jesus is more popular than the Beatles!
http://www.google.com/trends?q=jesus,+beatles&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
In your face Lennon!
Posted by Chuck on 11/02/07 at 08:06 AM ET
Great conversation everyone!
All of your points are indeed valid…and have made the follow-up video comparison of the major sports moot.
The post certainly did its job in evoking conversation.
Posted by NHL Digest on 11/02/07 at 09:07 AM ET
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Alanah,
Thanks for the link!
I found this absolutely horrifying that more people in the USA literally search for “Nothing” than search for eth “NHL”.
Posted by NHL Digest on 11/01/07 at 03:51 PM ET