Are people searching more for news about bitcoin or North Korea?
According to recently released data from search giant Google, bitcoin may be on top. As detailed in the company’s “Year in Search 2017,” an overview of what was trending in 2017, bitcoin ranked second under the “Global News” category, a distinction that indicates search volume was higher for the technology than even some of the year’s more talked-about global news events including Hurricane Irma, the Les Vegas shooting and this year’s Solar Eclipse.
Similarly, “How to buy bitcoin” also took the third spot under the “How to…” search category.
In this way, the news perhaps provides context by putting an estimate on just how strong the increasing attention on bitcoin and cryptocurrency has been in 2017 during the run-up in market prices.
For instance, the price of bitcoin grew by 20x over the course of 2017, rising from roughly $900 to an all-time-high at $19,783 in December. The cryptocurrency market capitalization also topped over $650 billion after a year’s growth from just $17 billion since early January, data from CoinMarketCap shows.
Yet what’s also interesting is that users from outside the U.S. seems more interested in searching topics relevant to bitcoin. For the U.S. country breakdown, Google’s data indicates that the two search terms of bitcoin in the Global News and “How to…” categories both dropped the fifth place.
Indeed, searching “bitcoin” at Google Trend reveals that the top countries that have shown the biggest interests in the world’s largest cryptocurrency include South Africa, Slovenia, Netherlands, Nigeria and Austria while the U.S. ranked 16th of the list.
Screen capture from Google Trend. Globe image via CoinDesk’s archive.
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