[DATA]: Google Search Trends Reveal Global Reaction to Man Utd’s Transfer Business

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Earlier today, Man Utd shared this post on Google+:

I thought it would be interesting to delve a bit deeper into Google’s search trends data around the activity that took place in the closing stages of the transfer window.

Below, I have compared search trends for Di Maria, Falcao, Blind and Welbeck (this data is using Google’s topics feature, rather than measuring only specific search queries – i.e. the Falcao topic will include searches for “Falcao”, “Radamel Falcao”, “Falcao 2014” etc.)

The graph charts search interest over the past 90 days, and shows clear correlation between transfers being done and Google’s worldwide user base searching for information on the deals.

The spike for Di Maria is pronounced, and actually two-pronged, with peaks on Sunday 24th and Tuesday 26th August (Ancelotti confirmed he was leaving on the Sunday, and United officially announced his arrival on the Tuesday).

Searches about Falcao began increasing around 26th August, with the player linked to a number of top clubs, and peaked on 1st September as the news of his arrival at United spread around the world.

Whilst interest in Di Maria was certainly significant, it’s eclipsed by searches for Falcao when that story started to break.

By contrast, interest in Welbeck was limited, and, unsurprisingly, the relative global excitement surrounding the transfer of Daley Blind also looks to be nowhere near as intense as that reserved for Di Maria and Falcao.

Other than Blind, where the majority of search activity came from Holland, the bulk of searches around our other signings took place in Africa – Di Maria and Falcao were big news in Guinea according to Google’s data, whilst Welbeck was the talk of the town in Kenya. United’s large following in Uganda and Nigeria is also in evidence upon further investigation of the data.

For about 24 hours, worldwide searches about Falcao were almost exactly equal to those for the iPhone 6, just to put this in all in a slightly wider context…

I know which one I’m more excited about!