Bitcoin Forum

I thought it would be good to track search engine interest in the altcoins, so we can decide which are getting more traction. I didn't see anything similar in here, so apologies if I'm covering old ground.

Why?

Whilst a new coin launch every five minutes is an excellent distraction, what we're all hopefully here for in the long term is to sort the wheat from the chaff, and find the most viable among these alternatives to really join BTC on the path to achieving widespread adoption.

Right now that's being done on the rapidly multiplying cryptocurrency exchanges popping up in every corner of the planet, but sooner or later some fundamentals are going to have to come into play. One of the early indicators is certainly going to be search interest.. after all, who is going to pay for products using a currency they have never heard of?

Which data sources?

The best way to do check out specific search volumes at a glance isn't Google Trends, though that data is useful of course. Instead I've gone for Google's search volume data, which is provided to AdWords pay-per-click advertisers. Whilst the AdWords data isn't accurate to a single search, it's the best we have, and provides a good relative comparison of the different coins.

What data? (changed to broad match - thanks gnomicide)

This chart is built using broad match search data - this data represents any search which contained the currency name. (e.g. "What is bitcoin?")

The data is averaged over 12 months, so there potentially a slight bias towards coins that have been around longer - and brand new coins will show no search volume. If we pull this data again and again in the coming months,  we'll get a picture of which alts are growing in momentum, and which are dying off. It will also mean coins launched around the same time (e.g. FTC and CNC) are easy to compare with one another.

Which coins?

I've compiled this using the coins from this thread - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=134179.0

I left out Ripple because its such a common word - and the data for Qubic shouldn't be seen as reliable due to the number of other businesses and websites using that name. I've also left BTC in the mix as our yardstick for interest level.

CURRENT CHART

Based on the broad match data, here is the current state of play, 10th May 2013.

[1] Bitcoin (-)
[2] Litecoin (-)
[3] Qubic (-)
[4] Namecoin (-)
[5] Solidcoin (-)
[5] Terracoin (-)
[7] PPCoin (-)
[8] Mincoin (-)
[9] Multicoin (-)
[9] Geist Geld (-)
[9] Novacoin (-)
[9] Bitbar (-)
[13] Devcoin (-)
[13] Freicoin (-)
[15] Rucoin (-)
[16] Ixcoin (-)
[17] Liquidcoin (-)
[18] Tenebrix (-)
[19] Fairbrix (-)
[20] Timekoin (-)
[21] BBQCoin (-)
[22] ByteCoin (-)
[23] Feathercoin (new entry)
[23] CHNcoin (new entry)
[23] Yacoin (new entry)


Broad Match

https://i.imgur.com/k6lTy7P.png

That sounds rather worthless. How many times do people only use the 1 word, except maybe the first time they read about Bitcoins in the paper, and have no clue what it is.

"what's a bitcoin?"
"litecoin vs bitcoin"
"is bitbar a scam?"
"best bbqcoin pool"
"remortgaged to buy feathercoins, what do?"

(edit: updated original post - changed to broad match)

Exact match data is often useful to have, but on reflection I think you're probably right in terms of gauging public interest.

I would have used the cryptocurrency codes (e.g. LTC) however there was too much potential for noise from shared acronyms.


 ;D

Unless the OP checked the 'exact results' filter, these numbers are broad metrics that include more broad phrases and not just the one word. The more significant problem is this data is not instantly updated so these new coins that have only been out for several weeks will naturally have inaccurate numbers.

I did indeed go for exact match only initially, but as gnomicide points out, it could be better to have broad results for our purposes. I've addressed the other point in my first post - whilst this is a factor now, we're trying to figure out long term adoption, not which coin to pump-and-dump next. We can wait a few months to see how things like FTC and CNC are playing out.

I've updated the first post with some extra info, and also decided to improve the format, by adding a chart (in typical "top of the pops" style) to show which which coins are on the rise, or falling further into obscurity.

I'll post a new chart each time I update the thread, with the underlying data below, and also keep post #1 updated with the latest chart too.

CURRENT CHART

Based on the broad match data, here is the current state of play, 10th May 2013.

[1] Bitcoin (-)
[2] Litecoin (-)
[3] Qubic (-)
[4] Namecoin (-)
[5] Solidcoin (-)
[5] Terracoin (-)
[7] PPCoin (-)
[8] Mincoin (-)
[9] Multicoin (-)
[9] Geist Geld (-)
[9] Novacoin (-)
[9] Bitbar (-)
[13] Devcoin (-)
[13] Freicoin (-)
[15] Rucoin (-)
[16] Ixcoin (-)
[17] Liquidcoin (-)
[18] Tenebrix (-)
[19] Fairbrix (-)
[20] Timekoin (-)
[21] BBQCoin (-)
[22] ByteCoin (-)
[23] Feathercoin (new entry)
[23] CHNcoin (new entry)
[23] Yacoin (new entry)

Royalcoin!

This is a good idea, but I have a nagging issue!

What about all the other search engines?

Google is a monopoly in the legal sense, but Bing, Yahoo, Baidu and the rest all bring their own percentages too.

There is also the tweet stats and other social media

Is this a best attempt, or is there actually a way to spot if a coin is growing in interest in a particular part of the world, under the all seeing Google radar?

BTW - I think Google is even more Evil than Bert! ;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bert_is_Evil

An alternative approach would be looking at the search term depth of a given coin.  The number of search term variations along with the search traffic values would be a better indicator of a coin popularity movement.

As indicated in a previous post, it is not typical for someone to search for something using on one word, but more likely to use a phrase of some sort.   Google Auto Suggest & Bing Auto Suggest provide good examples for these phrases and what is phrases are searched for most.

Here is a quick list of auto suggestions pulled from Bing and Google using Keyword Tool Dominator (http://www.keywordtooldominator.com/).  

Bitcoin: 518 Keyword Phrases and this could be expanded quite a bit more.
Litecoin: 465 Keyword Phrases
Namecoin: 317 Keyword Phrases
Mincoin: 67 Keyword Phrases
BitBar: 40 Keyword Phrases
Royalcoin: 0 Keyword Phrase - maybe Google and Bing are still catching up on this ;-p

Obviously this list could be expanded, but in this case you can see that search traffic alone may not tell the whole story.

@sunsofdust - the problem is autosuggest phrase lists are a) not exhaustive and b) can be manipulated (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/romanians-are-smart-or-how-to-change-the-google-autocomplete-suggestions)

I'm also not using single word search volume here. These are broad match search volumes (as suggested by gnomicide), which include every search containing the word + any other words.

@nwbitcoin - good point, especially as the most popular search engines in Russia, China etc are not the big bad G. I don't have time right now, but in the next few days I'll incorporate data from other search engines, and figure out a way of coming up with a score based on the combined results.

@mc_lovin - will include Royalcoin in the next couple of days.



Thanks for the input, really appreciate it. Any other ideas and suggestions for missing altcoins are welcome!