Three nations, one language - but what about their search interests?

Stephen Withers
Friday, 22 August 2008 07:52

Opinion and Analysis

As for mapquest, the last time I looked, its non-US maps weren't a great deal of use, so it seems hardly surprising that it didn't make the list in Australia or the UK.

The other explanation for the occurrence of the major domain names is that it reflects an intention to restrict searches to those sites, either by using the site: operator or simply by including the name in the search terms.

But if we take out those domain names, what's left?

Australia: games, weather, and real estate.

UK: games, weather.

US: weather.

So we're all interested in the weather, but Australian and British searchers are even more interested in games.

But what's with you tube (as opposed to youtube) appearing on the US top ten? It seems the problem also occurs across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, where the phrase also made the rising searches lists.

utube was another mistake that showed up in the UK rising searches list. Some of those searches might have been for the copycat sites that include utube in their names, or for utube as in Universal Tube, a US company that refurbishes tubemaking machinery, but that seems unlikely.

US search activity also saw craigs list (vs craigslist) make the rising searches list.

But porn does get a look in. The number one rising search term for the year so far in both Australia and the UK (up 480 and 510 percent respectively) was red tube - the name of a porn video sharing site.