Bitcoin Forum

is bitcoin bigger than we (or i) think, as it is often referred to or insinuated that it is only used by relatively few people.

From looking at the alexa ranking for some of the bitcoin sites, they are much higher than i would have expected (i am very pleased to see this!).

bitcointalk.org is 5,158 most popular site in the world.
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/bitcointalk.org (http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/bitcointalk.org)

CoinDesk is around 20,000 which is not bad for a news site on BitCoin that supposedly does not have too many followers.
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/coindesk.com (http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/coindesk.com)

bitcoin.org is 8,924
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/bitcoin.org (http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/bitcoin.org)

mtgox.com is 9,292
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/mtgox.com (http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/mtgox.com)

all 4 above sites are climbing fast too (much faster than most sites)!
From my limited experience of Alexa rankings, i would say that the above sites must take multiple-millions of page views and unique visitors per day.

Just thought i would share this....

Ford

Google:
how do I buy


look at what comes up

on UK google i get nothing bitcoin related for "how do i buy"  >:(
(i assume that is what you mean?)

that's amazing!

what are you guys seeing (am i missing out  :'(), i get nothing but how to buy on ebay, houses, shares, etc

I get "How do I buy on ebay" as my first response.

Buying Bitcoins does show up forth on my list though.

3rd for me. first is stock. second is house.

I think that Bitcoin is as big as I think it is - a $2B economy with >10K businesses and hundreds of thousands of users.

Based on data from http://www.similarweb.com/website/bitcointalk.org, it looks like the forum gets about 1M pageviews per day.


You do know that Google search results and autocomplete are targeted? If you look at Bitcoin all day, it will give you Bitcoin-related results... It has little to do with Bitcoin's popularity.

Interesting because i dont look at stocks or houses. so i guess they weigh targeting against most common searches?

i have all google tracking cookies and targeted searches disables (and cleared every time i close the browser) and i get nothing bitcoin related in the top 50 results using google UK  :'(

Yes.

well good im glad bitcoin isnt THAT popular. more room to grow.

First on my list seems to be 'a handjob.'  How bizarre.  Clicking on it shows instructions starting with acquiring BTC though so I guess Bitcoin really is taking off.

I do, but I found out that was in the top searches after I told my buddy about Bitcoin and he wanted to know how to buy them he said that was the top in his search.

Many of the users of Bitcoin will be using it because they want to remain anonymous, so of course the general public and news outlets aren't going to pick up as easily on this, you'll still be able to find activity but you won't be able to locate where they're all from unless they want it.

Even though the traffic is only tiny even my website is getting some people poking around using up the bandwidth and they don't all seem to be bots, at least I hope not :D.

Wow i never realised it was this popular, and only getting bigger!  :P

Actually, autocomplete for me was "how do I buy bitcoin" and I typically block google-analytics with NoScript.

That's pretty impressive.  Is there a way to see how many times search terms involving the word Bitcoin were done, and the growth of this?

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Bitcoin&cmpt=q

http://s24.postimg.org/4xwezm0t1/Capture.jpg

That can't be true. All I get is goat porn related stuff...

...oh, wait. I hadn't cleared my cookies



 :-[

AFAIK targeting is done only for language, location... and previous searches only if you allow Google to keep your search history.

LOL.

Try  to google
how do i buy+
the "+" starts a so-called verbatim search that is not (or at least not as much) influenced by your previous searches.

trends.google.com

Well I guess we know how well noscript blocks cookies then. 

I belive that users who use btc will double until next 6 months XD

:)

https://i.imgur.com/W4etLG7.png

It may not matter if it is or isn't targeted, if a user who does not search all day long for bitcoin such as us sees or hears about this, then they may out of curiosity do a search for this. If it doesn't show for them they may then autocomplete their own sentence with the word bitcoin, causing a semi self fulfilling prophecy, either way it's good for bitcoin.

Lol, we're moving up in the ranks! 
http://s16.postimg.org/blf6tfo6d/Untitled_1.jpg

Looking in google keyword planner, it shows bitcoin has 830k searches per month on average. Which is a lot more than I expected.
On the other hand, minecraft has 10 million searches per month.

Google suggest is based on personalized search. People interested in bitcoin will see more bitcoin related suggestions.

adding bitcoin to minecraft would be also a nice thing  ;)

As meni said: autocomplete is targeted to your personal needs.

someone made a bitcoin casino in minecraft a while back

Google:
how do I buy dollars (What is this?) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_currencies)

I tried to throw off personalized search by changing the wording a little. No Bitcoin, unfortunately :(.
https://i.imgur.com/21czu9Q.png

Amazing, skyrim seems still popular, I even have a dragon sculpture collection for the game  :D

It means they will have huge problem in the capacity of infrastructure soon  ::)

I tried your search and I still get "bitcoins" in the list. Also opened a web browser I never use (Safari) and I also get it there.

^ this

I though people already knows this

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=how+do+i+buy

Duck duck go doesn't bubble you like google does. Bitcoin is 8th.

Kind'a unsettling.  Seems like most people want to learn how to buy a house (so many flavors of that question in the top 10).  When they're not looking for a house, they want to figure out where to buy an iPhone (3rd).  And, once all of the basics are taken care of, and we're past the Top 10, a few eggheads still want to learn how to buy a book (11).

Doh!  Note to self: Read the whole thread before posting.

Actually, I thought that the individualized auto-completion was common knowledge or at least pretty self-evident to most.  In fact I actually would rather buy a handjob than a [sp]i-phone but those fuckin' prudes at Google need to make everything family friendly or something I guess.

Oh ma gawd Kewl!


 8)

It's hard to read outside in the rain and people like reading on their iPhone Kindle App?

Got it, thanks.  Gotta own a house & an iPhone before buying a book.
*More surprised that most of the Top 10 questions were variations on buying a house.  I always assumed that by the time you're ready, you know enough not to ask "how do i buy a house?"

Very neat. Was in second place for me. Quite surprised by that.

That seem to show news articles.


Nice, anyway to see how fast this has grown in the past 2 years?
Blockchain.info is also ranked fairly high.

Got it now.
https://i.imgur.com/SMjgn7l.jpg
Was looking good in April, price drop killed it.

You can 'untarget' Google by clearing cookies, logging out, using google.com/ncr, and changing your IP address.

^^ this again because it's important.

That's true only if you allow Google to keep your search history

That's not true either. Even if you don't have it keep your history, it keeps a history based on IP address. Try using a proxy and see how different your results are.

The kidney thing is a joke, right?  I assume so, and find it wildly amusing due to my twisted sense of humor.

At 'ki' I first showed 'kindle' for me, but kidney did appear.  Interestingly there was no option for just "How do I sell my kid".  I wonder if Google specifically coded that out.

I am sure Google do keep your IP address, but i doubt it effects your search results, as it would not be classed as a reliable method.
An IP address can and does change, and can then be assigned to different people, so any targeted search results would then become un-relevant (which is exactly what google does not want).
Also office/home networks (or similar) will all give the same IP address to google, so again the targeted search would become unreliable.

I do however think that all the people posting here that have "how to buy bitcoin" in their results are seeing the effects of targeted searching.
I carefully block googles tracking cookies (and empty my cookies that i need to accept several times a day) and i am not seeing any bitcoin related results within the first 50 google results.

(+ if you use a proxy, would you still not see the targeted results based on the proxies IP.......)

either way, the alexa results and google trends/suggested terms are showing a fast increase in bitcoin popularity

Best Regards
Ford

lol - Unfortunately, as we found out in 2008, there are a lot of people that are not ready to buy houses that are buying them anyway.

I was ready at the end of 2010.  The project interfered with enough interest in Bitcoin to have pulled the source code.  How many millions I lost by buying that house will never be known.  There is a small consolation in that the rental is providing a decent return stream...by mainstream investment standards at least.

Search volume in my earlier post is actually worse than I expected think it's an accurate reflection of how well known it is minus the fluctuation due to price jumping, etc.   I checked 'pokemon', gets 3 million hits, just randomly something I picked.  I would like to see what it looks like on Baidu also.

Possibly due to this post, kidney is appearing for me now :P

Yes, i thought it was low in your previous post too.
However saying this, i am a bitcoin fan, but dont really search for "bitcoin" as i think i already know all the sites that will be returned with this search..... (i also use UK POUNDS £, but have never searched google for them :-))

not really related but here are some funny results for google auto-complete

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=strange+google+autocomplete&espv=210&es_sm=122&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=m-BuUu3lAaSv7QbKy4G4Ag&ved=0CDcQsAQ&biw=1280&bih=911#imgdii=_ (https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=strange+google+autocomplete&espv=210&es_sm=122&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=m-BuUu3lAaSv7QbKy4G4Ag&ved=0CDcQsAQ&biw=1280&bih=911#imgdii=_)

The only real issue left is how to appeal to the "How Do I Get Free Coins" crowd. I think MCXnow interest rates and devcoins for writers is the answer.

As well as a mass grouping of BTCtalk YouTubers teaming up in threads, then eventually visiting each other and making videos together. And of course adding bitcoin addresses to their channels. If we can get YouTube to love bitcoin, we can get everyone to love bitcoin.

Imagine that a kid on Facebook or YouTube that has never had a job in his life, could contribute to the bitcoin community simply by becoming involved in Bitcoin, and getting others excited about it via the sharing of information.

Also, if there were more coins that were available to less computer literate people Bitcoin could thrive. Think about people that can't ever mine due to computer literacy restrictions.

i just picked some random things off the top of my head with the intention of providing some perspective.

http://s23.postimg.org/xrqpvq5mz/bitcoin.jpg

this train has clearly left the station ::)

provide perspective on a postage stamp?

EDIT: thanks for resize ;)

So, should the title of this thread be "is bitcoin SMALLER than we think?"

And what do people think will make it bigger?

personally i dont think facebook/youtube posting will help, as this has already been done.
i think the more bitcoin services there are, and simplification of buying and using bitcoins is essential for mainstream growth.

we still have ways to go:

https://i.imgur.com/BD4PyuFl.png (https://i.imgur.com/BD4PyuF.png)

Depends on what you mean by "bigger."
 
There's no definite link between mass adoption and bitcoin price.  This is pretty obvious == watch the price rise & fall. The number of users obviously doesn't account for those changes.

I see no obvious connection between the number of services & bitcoin price ether -- for the same reason as above, +SR going offline as the price spiked.

There's arguably a weak link between public awareness of bitcoin and its price -- google searches spike during major price jumps -- but that's not the same as mass adoption (after a terrorist bombing, media buzz about terrorism increases & so do google searches, doesn't mean more people are becoming terrorists).

So maybe we should limit the scope to just one of these things -- raising the price, raising public awareness, or raising the user base.

I don't think OP was talking about price.  Public awareness or user base sound about right and one will affect the other.

Yes, i mean more of the user base than the price.
From my point of view as a merchant, the more people that use it, the more use bitcoin will be to me and others (this may increase the price, but that's not of a main/real benefit to merchants).

1. Tell 10 people you know about bitcoin
2. Provide each of those people with 0.1 BTC for free (spread the wealth)
3. Ask them to tell a friend about bitcoin and that they should give that friend 10% of that 0.1 that they just received.
4. Infinite Loop
4. ??
5. NEXT STOP SATURN. ONWARDS TO ALPHA CENTAURI.

It's not about making Facebook posts and YouTube videos, it is about giving the people that do that the ability to earn coins without mining. And not just through tips.

That is the future. That is how everyone comes to Bitcoin.

we need something big that accepts BTC, i guess in near future paypal will do something to accept BTC they will not have any options if they want to survive

http://howdoyoubuybitcoins.com/ (http://howdoyoubuybitcoins.com/) is found as the 9th result :)

Quite impressive :) 

p.s. Im using DuckDuckGo (and a VPN) to search google, that way, google results are more neutral instead of user orriented !

Dont be so naive, they also use your gmail content, G+ content too, they are even able to differentiate different user from the same IP.. Quite a lot of researsh have been made from them about it, and they use a lot of trick to target/track user.. Do you know each page you visit that contains a G+ / FaceeBook / Twitter / Linked / .. share button are relaying your IP to those site.. Dont beleive they wont use this data !
So they all know your IP visited this page.  I bet there is something similar with GoogleAds..

Then I also use ShareMeNot http://sharemenot.cs.washington.edu/

Golden Arches? That would get people interested.  ;) ;)  :o

paypal must think about this otherwise its must be in history books only no place for this in near future without bitcoin :D

So bitcoin and bombs spiked around the same time?
Update on that chart i posted, BTC searches got as high as 5 million in Novemeber and December, and still over 2 million on the most recent month they showed.

for me it's

1) stock
2) bitcoin
3) a house
4) shares
5) a domain name

when i use incognito mode it's:

1) a house in skyrim
2) dogecoins <-- wow
3) bitcoins
4) stocks

I always clean the cookies, how does it work?

Really exciting to see it's on top for some people:
7th spot for me.
Google has very "customized" results these days.

I'm not using a UK google but i still get nothing exept buying on ebay different stuff too

Ideas grow in popularity if they are well-rooted in the soil of truth. Bitcoin is - it's raw mathematics, the purest of all the sciences.

Time.

Wow!!! It appears that "how do i buy bitcoins" is the second most searched for key-phrase after "how do i buy stocks". 
Appears on #2 in suggested key-phrases!!!

I think it's about as big as we generrally think it is

I don't get anything ebay related. On the first page it comes: how to invest BTC, exchange BTC, buy/sell BTC and many other bitcoin related topics. So i guess bitcoin gets more and more popular on the internet.

Bitcoin is way bigger than we think, but not in the way we think. Here's a tiny explanation of how Bitcoin is way bigger than we think: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=575782.msg6320271#msg6320271.

:)

EDIT: Ford, you wouldn't happen to be the Ford from "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," would you?

Bitcointalk.org is 2296 on Alexa now. :)
Bitcoin is big, but I think it will be bigger soon.

I'm really interested in crypto money  :)

you came to the right place. welcome!

I just went to yahoo and googled this but couldnt find anything???

4th is Bitcoin related, nothing else. Wasn't very big to be honest.

For sure it is big in internet. It will take some time for the rest of the world but for sure ti will happen at some point.

bitcoin will rise again, stronger than ever.

Bitcoin will rise again. It's just the calm before the storm. I expect so... :)

Bitcoin users and people interested in Bitcoin may be overrepresented in the stats that Alexa produces.

I have a feeling that the number of people who possess Bitcoins might be significantly less than the 1 million to 3 million figure quoted by various sources. Look at the Mt Gox data. Only 69,000 people lost their coins. Most of the Bitcoiners were using that exchange.... so that number was much lower than what I was expecting.

Did the data show all accounts?  Many people took all of their coins off the exchange before the collapse.

Nope... 69,000 is the number of people who actually lost money in Mt Gox, and not the total number of users who were active in Mt Gox at the time of its shutting down. Anyway... I myself lost BTC0.001. ;D

I had a fraction of a coin on there too.  I am not even sure how much but it was only $1 worth or so.

In ten years that $1 could be worth $100.  I will be so mad then. ;) LOL