Current Google Insights Trends: NORAD tracks Santa
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Your support makes all the difference.Santa's journey around the world, as tracked by defense establishment NORAD, tops the list of Google keyword trends for the past seven days on Wednesday.
North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) tracked Santa delivering his presents for the 54th year running, displaying live progress on its website for children around the world to view. "Santa tracker", "norad santa" and "norad" were the topics with the most search growth. NORAD says that more than 13 million visitors from 231 countries tracked Santa online this year.
December 26, the day of the traditional Boxing Day sales in the UK, Australia and Canada, took fourth place in the Google Insights trends, as people logged on to find bargains online before hitting the shops. "Currys" took ninth place in Wednesday's list, predominantly in the UK, where the British retailer is heavily discounting items as part of the post-Christmas sales.
Apple's iTunes and iPod Touch were also heavily searched, suggesting that the new owners of Apple products given as gifts were logging on to download the required software and music for their presents. The term "itunes download" took fifth place, with "itunes" in seventh and "ipod touch" in eighth. American mobile app analyst Flurry estimated this week that month-on-month growth for downloads from the iTunes store was 50 percent in December, with iPhone App downloads, predominantly for the iPod Touch, rocketing by almost 1000 percent on Christmas Day.
Peer-to-peer downloading software "limewire" was tenth place in the ranking, suggesting that web users are looking for software to download media to fill their new Christmas presents.
The search terms with the most significant growth worldwide in the last seven days as measured by Google Insights, recorded on December 30 at 10:00 AM GMT are:
1. santa tracker +2,650%
2. norad santa +1,850%
3. norad +1,550%
4. boxing day +550%
5. itunes download +140%
6. merry christmas +120%
7. itunes +100%
8. ipod touch +100%
9. currys +90%
10. limewire +60%
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