A new Google Trends feature is available, and I quickly decided to use it to see which is most popular on the Internet: sex, gambling, or financial info? So I entered the search string “porn, gambling, stocks.” Here is the result:
Google Trends: porn, gambling, stocks
If you don’t want to click over, I’ll give you a summary. “Porn” is, far and away, more searched for than either “gambling” or “stocks.” More news is generated about stocks than gambling or porn (a distant third place). Australia is leading the pack in “regions” searching for porn and gambling, while the US and India are more likely to look for stocks. The top porn city is Manchester, UK; for stocks is Delhi, India (though it’s still about 1/20 the volume of porn), and Chicago is the gambling leader.
Further, using this feature, I’ve found that Bellagio and Wynn are just about neck-and-neck in most regions in search volume. But searching for “Circus Circus” and “Wynn Las Vegas” I found something interesting. Despite a Wynn surge in late 2004, they are currently running pretty close in search volume.
Turning to Atlantic City, I found that Borgata is way more popular a search term than “Trump Taj Mahal.” Also, while the news coverage of Borgata has had a few spikes, there’s been no discernable coverage of the Taj, at least by Google’s measure. I find it interesting that people in Atlantic City and Pleasantville are searching more than anyone else for Borgata.
Finally, if you want an index of which games people are looking for, it breaks down like this: poker is far, far in the lead, followed by blackjack, roulette, and craps. It’s not even a contest.