I was playing with Google Trends and their comparison function and noticed that you can now limit searches to regions (ie just Australia, for example). I was playing around looking at the comparative popularity of ‘blog’ versus ‘wiki’ and found something interesting: cumulatively, global searchers are still typing in ‘blog’ more, but in Australia, ‘wiki’ is a more popular term, and has been since the third quarter of 2006. Since there’s no scale on Google Trends, I’ve no numbers attached to these trends, but the results are interesting nevertheless.
Australia is looking for wikis…
While the world is looking for blogs…
[Click either image to expand.]
I’ve no idea why wikis are more popular in Australia … perhaps something to do with Wikipedia? I note in the News trends (the smaller bottom graph), blogs are still mentioned a lot more in the mainstream media. I wonder what it is about wikis and Aussies?
May 23rd, 2007 at 4:24 pm
[...] Searching Blogs Vs Wikis – Australians Prefer Wiki (The World Prefers Blog) : Tama Leaver dot Net Tama Leaver noticed that Google Trends shows that Australians search for “wiki” increasingly and more than they search for “blog” – whereas the rest of the world is the other way around. (tags: wiki blog Australia) Filed under:General — Jill @ 10:24 [ ] [...]
May 23rd, 2007 at 4:45 pm
It might also have to do with the type of content people are looking for. Maybe Australians are looking for more specific objects that have a higher probability of being located within wikis. Or Australians see wikis as more reliable sources than blogs.
The Dutch show a slightly bigger difference between the two than the Australians. Wikis are newer than blogs and you can see the turning point in the Dutch statistics halfway 2005 and in the Australian statistics at 3/4 of 2005. The worldwide trend seems to be heading towards a halfway 2007 turning point. Does this mean that wikis are about to replace blogs as informational sources?
It makes one wonder.
May 23rd, 2007 at 8:24 pm
[...] Searching Blogs Vs Wikis – Australians Prefer Wiki (The World Prefers Blog) I wonder if this trend coincides with the recent Jimmy Wales visit? (tags: blog wiki slict google) [...]
May 25th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
[...] vs Wikis May 25th, 2007 Using Google Trends and its ability to limit searches by region, Tama Leaver tested the comparative popularity of ‘blog’ versus ‘wiki’ and found something unexpected: [...]