Google’s trend explorer shows that global searches for the keyword ‘bitcoin’ more than tripled during Tuesday’s massive rally.
Bitcoin Searches Spike as Crypto Market Booms
While the precise number of searches was not available, Google’s backend algorithms determined Tuesday’s search volume by comparing it with the number of queries over time.
Early Tuesday morning, the volume of ‘bitcoin’ searches went parabolic, more than tripling over a matter of hours. Crypto interest tapered on Wednesday but remained noticeably higher than earlier in the week.
Bitcoin curiosity spiked during Tuesday’s buying frenzy. | SOURCE: GOOGLE TRENDS
Google’s trend data further revealed that ‘bitcoin’ searches were most popular in Nigeria, followed by South Africa, Netherlands, Austria, and Switzerland. Interestingly, the US missed the top-ten and came at rank 14, while Canada was at 11 – perhaps because the spike occurred during the middle of the night. Hyperinflation-struck Venzeula scarcely made it into the top-20 and came 19th in ‘bitcoin’ keyword interest.
Crypto Prices Correlate with Google Searches
Bitcoin’s upside swing in Google searches coincided with its bullish performance in the market. The bitcoin price on Coinbase surged 22.63 percent to $5,123 in just two hours – between 4:00 UTC and 6:00 UTC. It was just around the time when bitcoin’s search trend picked momentum.
By 18:00 UTC on April 2, however, the Google keyword interest had dropped to 60 on a scale of 1 to 100. Around that time, the bitcoin price was following a weak sideways trend, trading in a range defined by $4,721-$4,739.
Google searches spiked just as the crypto market posted a monster green candle. | SOURCE: YAHOO FINANCE
The Google Trends move confirmed a strong correlation between price volatility and ‘bitcoin’ keyword searches. In September 2017, researchers at SEMrush, a search engine marketing firm, found that the bitcoin price at that time had a 91 percent correlation with crypto-related search terms on Google. The study gave a simple explanation, stating that bitcoin’s rising price excited more people and, in return, those people searched online to find out what was it and how was it doing in the market.
True statement
Explore search interest for bitcoin by time, location and popularity on Google Trends – https://t.co/luf12SD4km— Adam (@aikewood) April 2, 2019
Nevertheless, crypto searches also spike during bearish times. During the November 2018 crash, in which BTC/USD had broken below its long-term support at $6,000, the cryptocurrency’s query on Google had brought its score to 88. That said, the flagship cryptocurrency’s price did not necessarily react to Google trends. It was always the other way around.