14 DAY TRIAL // With the World Cup well underway there have been a lot of memorable and some not so memorable moments for football fans. As always, they’ve turned to the web to satisfy their curiosity of all things World Cup and, at least for the time being, the tool of choice is still Google. The company’s search engineers have been keeping an eye on World Cup-related searches and have rounded up the most interesting trends.
“With the group round of the World Cup coming to a close and the round of 16 under way, it’s the perfect time to see what’s piqued searchers’ interest since our pre-tournament search trends kick-off. Understandably, searches for [world cup standings] climbed steadily during the first week of play as fans around the globe watched the various teams jockey within their groups to qualify for the next round,” Emily Wood, an editor with the Google Blog team, writes.
“One of the rising—and controversial—stars of the World Cup’s initial days was the ubiquitous vuvuzela, which, at its peak on June 15, nearly overtook searches for [waka waka], the official song of the 2010 World Cup sung by Shakira,” she adds.
Controversial matches and decisions led to a guaranteed spike in related searches. Some of the matches that sparked the most interest were Switzerland’s win over Spain and New Zeeland’s surprising draw with Italy, the reigning world champs. The performance spurred people to get more info on the All Whites - name given to the New Zeeland team in relation to their all white equipment and to the more famous All Blacks national rugby team.
The official ball of the tournament was not spared from controversy either, the searches for Jabulani, the name of the ball which has been criticized by a number of goalkeepers and players, have remained high throughout the first stage of the competition.