Google Trends China

Google has a new function that lets you compare search and news results for keywords. Above is an image for the trends for Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong. It is interesting to note the following:

• Search Volume: Beijing has the lowest search volume, Shanghai is double Beijing’s and Hong Kong is more than double Shanghai’s
• News volume: Shanghai has the lowest news volume, Beijing and Hong Kong are approximately equal at double Shanghai’s volume

It’s interesting the Beijing and Hong Kong generate about the same amount of news. One would expect Beijing, as the capital, to generate more than Shanghai. But I am surprised how close Hong Kong and Beijing are. Maybe this is the language effect - I am searching in English. Search volume tells another story there is clearly a huge amount of interest in Hong Kong (at least for English searchers) - much more so than for Beijing and Shanghai. If one adds Taipei and Singapore to the results (left as an excercise for the reader) we see Singapore at double Hong Kong for searches while Taipei is the lowest of all five. So in terms of where the action is (at least as far as Google is concerned) we get the following (high to low): Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Taipei. Which is interesting because I’ve visited Singapore many times and I can safely say it is the most boring place on Earth.