Despite bitcoin reaching more than double the price of the last all time high, I don't see around me and in my country (Croatia) as much interest as in late 2017/early 2018 so I was curious what's the situation according to Google Trends and how popular "bitcoin" as term is.
Timeframe I set was from January 1st 2009 up until today, January 13th 2021. As you can see from the screenshot below, users worldwide googled "bitcoin" less now than compared to December 2017 (approximately 20% less) when interest was at it's peak, despite the price increase which usually triggers the interest.
Numbers represent search interest relative to the highest point on the chart for the given region and time. A value of 100 is the peak popularity for the term. A value of 50 means that the term is half as popular. A score of 0 means that there was not enough data for this term.
This map shows in which countries people googled for bitcoin the most, darker the blue, higher percentage of "bitcoin" term being googled, relative to all other searches in that country. Grey colour means that there is no enough data available.
I knew that Nigeria will probably be high on the list, but I had no idea that "bitcoin" term is googled so much in a few other African countries like Ghana and South Africa.
Top 10 countries:
Nigeria 100
South Africa 65
Ghana 58
Austria 46
Netherlands 43
Switzerland 41
Singapore 41
Slovenia 40
Australia 38
Canada 35
Rest of the list you can find
here. Out of those big markets, Germany is ranked 11 with 34 score, United States are 14th with 31, United Kingdom 21st with 26 score. What surprises me is that South Korea is ranked 52nd, Russia 61st and the last is Japan, with score 2.
Values are calculated on a scale from 0 to 100, where 100 is the location with the most popularity as a fraction of total searches in that location, a value of 50 indicates a location which is half as popular. A value of 0 indicates a location where there was not enough data for this term. A higher value means a higher proportion of all queries, not a higher absolute query count. So a tiny country where 80% of the queries are for 'bananas' will get twice the score of a giant country where only 40% of the queries are for 'bananas'.
I fully understand that just because someone googles "bitcoin" doesn't mean he will actually buy it, but it still give us some idea on the current interest, which usually coincides with increased price. So, what's the situation around you and in your country, do you notice more or less interest compared to 2017?