This is an embedded Google map showing various regions and the level of interest in cats (concerning information and stories etc.) online associated with that region.
“Values are calculated on a scale from 0 to 100, where 100 is the location with the most popularity as a fraction of total searches in that location, a value of 50 indicates a location which is half as popular, and a value of 0 indicates a location where the term was less than 1% as popular as the peak.” (Google explanation on Google Trends)
Please click on the little menu icon at the bottom right of the map as the map now fails to show but the list does the same job.
Most interest in cats as a proportion of the population comes from New Zealand. This surprised me a little. The UK, Australia, USA and Canada follow close behind. This does not surprise me. Whenever one writes about cats in English you know that these countries will be the main audience. I write with the USA in mind or the UK. Quite rarely I’ll write with India in mind.
At the other end of the scale Vietnam shows the least interest in info. on cats on the internet (and perhaps therefore cats in general) of all the regions of the world. Brazil, Argentina, Taiwan and Thailand follow closely behind as places where people are disinterested in searching for info about cats online. Vietnam’s bottom place is unsurprising. Their interest is limited to cooking and eating domestic cats.
Brazil has a high domestic cat population so the cat is popular. I suspect that their low ranking is due to internet problems! Russia also shows a low interest in cats and yet Russians like their cats. They have many cat breeders and some well-known Russian breeds. This may be a language issue. Most information and stories about cats are written in English and perhaps Russians don’t speak English as commonly as some other countries such as Germany or the Netherlands.
