NFTs and Google Search Trends

Google search interest in NFTs peaked in early March [Beeple Everydays Sale] and at the start of May [Oscar NFT controversy]

Note on the Oscar controversy: Andre O’Shea made a beautiful work of art honouring the memory of the late Chadwick Boseman. Half of the auction proceeds were bookmarked for the Colon Cancer Foundation. He was unfairly targeted by a mob that (1) Did not understand the value of NFT art and (2) Mistakenly believed that the Oscars officially backed the auction despite Chadwick Boseman not winning Best Actor. Andre did not deserve the harassment.

Interestingly, when we break down Google search interest by region, we see higher popularity for the search term "NFT" in China, Singapore, Canada and Hong Kong than in the US despite the US driving more web traffic to popular NFT marketplaces such as OpenSea.

Note: A higher popularity score means the search term had a higher proportion of all queries from that region. It does not indicate a higher absolute query count. So a small region, like Hong Kong, where 80% of the queries are for "bananas" will get twice the score of a giant region where only 40% of the queries are for "bananas".

Also, Google search is banned in China, so Google search volume is a small fraction of China's total search engine volume, and its ranking here is not very reliable.

Over the past year, users searching for "NFT" also searched for these topics. Notable mentions in the top related search topics are OpenSea and  Mike Winkelmann (Beeple). The ranking is based on which related topics saw the greatest growth in search frequency.

1. Marketplace
2. Art finance
3. Mike Winkelmann
4. CoinMarketCap
5. Digital Art
   

During the height of the NFT bull run earlier this year, search interest for NFTs eclipsed search interest for DeFi. Even at the height of the 2020 DeFi summer, the DeFi search term did not achieve the level of popularity NFTs did this year.

This is not an indicator of which field is more ‘important’. But it does show that NFTs are key to solving the crypto adoption problem. They will play a big role in onboarding the next million crypto-natives. The reason is simple.

The average person is more interested in art, memes and culture than the efficiency and decentralization of financial markets.

Bonus Round: Looking at Youtube search interest, we once again see a similar peak in popularity around March and May.

The Saturday Night Live moment was a big deal when it came to NFT related Youtube search interest, ranking 4th in growing related search topics. Lol.

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