When you’re in the publishing business, search terms in sport are key – it tells you what real people are searching for, every single day.
I’m sure that the sporting public would also be similarly intrigued about what sports fans are looking for on in their search engine, so I’ve put together a little report on 2015 in sport, as it was seen by the two biggest traffic providers in search, Google and Bing.
The biggest sporting event of 2015? According to both search engines, the Rugby World Cup was the biggest single event of the year.
The two challengers for the title were the Cricket World Cup and football’s Asian Cup, which was won by the Socceroos.
Here’s a graph that gives you a nice breakdown of how the searches spiked during the year.
Obviously, this data is less informative about what search terms gained a lot of attention over the year as part of a ‘slow burn’, but it’s interesting nonetheless.
For those wondering where the NRL grand final is, I chose to include State of Origin, as all three peaks were bigger than the NRL’s showpiece, which was around 75% of the AFL grand final.
The first thing that struck us about the data was that the Melbourne Cup didn’t appear on the charts of Google Trends due to lack of searches. I feel like it could be more of an anomaly due to the lack of sustained interest in the search term. That’s just my hypothesis based on Roar traffic, my experience as well as a few other things, but if you run a report for interest in the Melbourne Cup over 10 years, the spikes each year are prodigious.
Here’s a graph that compares the Melbourne Cup to the Rugby World Cup.
This illustrates my point, in that the big peaks of the Melbourne Cup are far bigger than the peak of the Rugby World Cup, which was in turn bigger than the Asian Cup, Cricket World Cup, and AFL grand final.
The big topics this year were fairly predictable – AFL, NRL, rugby, cricket. I have no idea how ‘Canberra’ slipped in there, but there you go.
If you look at sports over the entire year, AFL is by far the most popular search term, ahead of cricket then NRL. Obviously you don’t include State of Origin in that little mix, as it’s a different search term, but
Bing’s breakdown of the data was that the Rugby World Cup was the biggest search term for users, with the AFL and NRL grand finals coming in next.
A Bing spokesman said the Rugby World Cup was the biggest event of the year.
“According to Bing, sport obsessed Aussies kicked the Rugby World Cup into the top search trend this year and the AFL grand final searches beat the NRL grand final by 18%.”
Interestingly, Bing’s data also included a number of people as part of their searches. Looking at Trends, Jarryd Hayne was big in Australia, but no one beats Ronda Rousey, who is the queen of the searches.
That’s my analysis of the data, all of which is available if you have a look on Bing or Google Trends.
What do you make of it Roarers?
Mike
Guest
I think you're right Vinnie. All RWC games were played in the middle of the night so many hardcore as well as cursory fans would have googled results in the mornings. This is something the domestic sports fans wouldn't need to do. As a guide to the popularity of Rugby its probably a tad misleading.
I believe the time zones had something to do with this and the exclusivity of rugby in Australia. A lot of Aussies would have been googling RWC for results and highlights the next morning unlike the big NRL games or Melbourne Cup when most people are watching it and don't need any highlights
Stats are from Australia so a couple of things will have influenced this, one being she lost to Holm in Melbourne in front of a record UFC crowd and the Australian media were actually taking notice of it
Brendon
Guest
I don't know about you but I only use search engines to search for stuff I don't know about. Why would I search for cricket world cup? Why would cricket fans need to a search engine to find out about the cricket world cup? The RWC is the only time rugby is a big deal throughout the country. Remember people living in WA, SA, VIC and TAS generally don't care much about rugby but talking to friends from those states, most of them hardcore AFL fans, I was surprised to see quite a few of them knew what was happening in the RWC and how Australia was going. Some of them were even following the Wallabies and the RWC. Normally if I talked to them about the Rugby Championship, Super Rugby or Bledisloe Cup I will be met with indifference. Remember the rugby world wet itself that 25 million people in Japan watched a match. How many people in India watch the Sydney semi-final?
Rugby stu
Guest
Actually most of the AFL searches were for the American Football League
soapit
Guest
i have for nrl as the quickest way to get to their site when i want to check out game times etc. mind you after the first few times autofill probably does it for me tbh and actually would have done the same for world cup games times as well.
Reggie13
Roar Rookie
I'm pretty ignorant here but is this all about people who type "NRL" or "rugby World Cup" into Google? Has anyone on this site ever done this? I'm not sure how relevant this study is.
duecer
Guest
Opposite in my experience, far more of an AFL following. I think having North QLD and a tight contest would've garnered more interest than a fairly bland AFL GF.
Patrick Effeney
Editor
Just in oz
vic rugby
Guest
The highest search not displayed is what is afl?
Cugel
Roar Rookie
Most of the searches would have been "There's a rugby world cup?"
soapit
Guest
interesting g raph being searches as you start to wonder what effects lack of knowledge about something increases the searches. perhaps not a glowing endorsement of where the game was at beforehand
soapit
Guest
not much to do and good internet speed?
soapit
Guest
in a world cup year?
soapit
Guest
after some thought it comes down to scale of event and depth of support. was it just searches from oz?
soapit
Guest
dunno.
Tim
Guest
I mean the stats only reference the AFL gf so not sure if that is a fair comparison
AndyS
Guest
Damn phone, was supposed to be a reply to Tim. I suppose the open question is why all of them were searching. If it was a substitute for watching/actively following, or because it reflected the dearth of coverage, not sure it would reflect so well.
AndyS
Guest
You mean as opposed to the length of the AFL season...?
Who Needs Melon
Roar Guru
Interesting stuff. I agree the Melbourne Cup thing says something about the briefness of the event. For myself if I wanted to know about the Rugby World Cup, I'd head to sites I know like the Roar. But if I wanted to know something about the Melbourne Cup, I'd be more inclined just to Google it. The stepping down trend over the 3 State of Origin matches is interesting too. Does this say that interest waned as the series progressed? What's the deal with Ronda Rousey? Seems to be very popular - always lots of stories, etc. - does this say some young men have a more than sporting interest? Or is it a watching-a-car-crash thing? Don't really get it myself. Finally: Is there anything that's been more over-reported and over-hyped this year than Jarryd Hayne?!? I stopped reading anything about him weeks ago. I may have missed something important but there was too much 'noise' from other articles about nothing.