Europe Blog
Our views on the Internet and society
Germany's World Cup victory comes alive through search
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
On Sunday, Germany won their fourth world championship, and, over the course of the last month, the world watched them do it—in Brazil, in bars and living rooms around the world, on their phones and laptops and tablets. This World Cup was the most digital, most connected, and most searched global event we've seen to date. There were more than 2.1 billion tournament-related searches on Google, many of which we shared on our
trends hub
.
Looking at the trends from each match, you’ll see some topics that you’d expect to catch the world’s attention, such as top players and highly-anticipated matches. But who would have guessed that there were
10x more searches
in the U.S. for the World Cup than for the NBA Playoffs? Or that
Clint Dempsey
, American soccer star who also has a rap single, had 2x more search interest than Jay-Z? Or that after
Ángel di María's
divine goal against Switzerland, he netted 4x more global searches than his fellow countryman, Pope Francis?
Mexico’s Guillermo Ochoa was the most searched goalie in the tournament, but
Tim Howard’s heroics
could hardly be forgotten. German goalkeeper Manuel Neuer not only snagged third place in search, but took home the 2014 Golden Glove award and a World Cup championship to boot.
The
Germany vs. Brazil
semifinal was the most searched match throughout the tournament, leaving many people around the world asking, “What is the biggest win in World Cup history?” Meanwhile, some countries were ready to move on to the next opportunity: after the third place game, Brazilians
searched more
for “World Cup 2018” than for the final game between Argentina and Germany.
No World Cup would be complete without a few surprises—and the creative people of the web were ready to weigh in. Uruguay's Luis Suarez was the most searched player meme, and at the time of the Uruguay-Italy game, there were 20x more searches globally for “Suarez Bite” than for snake, spider, tick, fly, dog and mosquito bites combined.
And if a search Dream Team was created, you’d see these 11 players strutting their stuff on the field. While German star
Mario Götze
didn’t make this list, he was a favorite on search. Even before his goal won it all in the final, he attracted 4x more search attention than Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen, who presented Germany with the championship trophy.
Beyond the impressive stats on the field, we’ve got some numbers of our own to share:
Our team watched 107+ hours of football (we didn’t even need a water break!) and spent 250+ hours bringing you regular insights from our first ever World Cup trends hub. We hope you enjoyed the excitement of the tournament as much as we did, and for more trends, visit
google.com/worldcup
or check out our
Google+ album
.
Posted by
Roya Soleimani
, Communications Manager, who searched for [
iran vs. argentina
], [
brazil’s 12th player
], and of course [
world cup schedule
] throughout the tournament<
Searching for World Cup trends
Monday, June 30, 2014
The World Cup continues to inspire feverish discussion around the globe. Here are some highlights from our search results from the second week of action.
Dutchman Robin Van Persie's flying header won honors for the best goal.
Brazilian striker Neymar won for the most searched hairdo.
Englishman Howard Webb lost out for the most searched referee to a Japanese rival.
Find out more about World Cup by tuning into this
special trends edition
.
Posted by William Echikson, Google Europe Blog editor
After a week in Brazil, here are the hot trends on the field
Friday, June 20, 2014
The 2014 FIFA World Cup™ is heating up, and it’s capturing the imagination of Europeans.
Google Trends
gives your real-time guide to the players, teams and moments that football lovers are interested in. Here’s a flavour of what Europeans have been searching for during the first week of action in Brazil.
During a match without national anthems due to a technical glitch, France searches for anthem La Marseillaise increased more than 3x
In a game that went all Germany’s way, Müller’s hat-trick scored 3x more local searches than Pepe’s head-butt.
We can show you what questions fans are most asking Google about the tournament, and we can give you a flavour of the national sentiment before or after a match, by analysing posts on Google+. Compare how Costa Rica and Italy are feeling before today’s game:
At
google.com/worldcup
you can explore these moments throughout the tournament, whether it’s insight on how a country is feeling ahead of a big match, or where fans stand on a controversial match-winning refereeing decision.
Posted by Gareth Evans, Communications, London
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