Bicycle Mystery

In response to my "Goodbye to Old Friends" post, Whareagle made a comment from which I quote:

• "whareagle said...  Dude - go to "Google Trends" and type in 'cycling', then focus in on the US, then Texas, and set the date to 2004-present. We're F'ed. The US is F'ed in regards to cycling, and Texas is REALLY F'ed.  I'm out of business. I got a call from TWO other Level 1 coaches, asking for work..."

At the time, I advised against panic (I've been known to cite Google Trends myself, such as here and here), even though he was completely correct in his observation of the Google trends.  These are shown in the two graphics below, along with "bicycle" for comparison

US Google Trends for bicycle and cycling. Bicycle now sits at 33% of its Peak

Things Look EVEN WORSE in Texas, Where Bicycle has dropped to 25% of its Peak

Things certainly look dark for those of us that frequently use human-powered two wheeled vehicles for transport. However, things are not always as bleak as they first appear. To check things out a little more thoroughly, I tried a couple of similar, but different search terms, adding "Bicycle" as a topic rather than a search term, and also "bike" as a comparitive search term. THAT shows a rather different story

Searching for the Term "Bike" Suggests Searches are 76% of the Peak

I checked further, Looking at my old post, I decided to see how the term "vampire" has fared over time, since it was more popular than "cyclist" back when I posted here. Well, instead of cyclist and vampire in Texas as I used then, I used bike and vampire in Texas. The results are shown below:

As you may note, the term "bike" is still sitting at 69% of its peak, while interest in "vampire" has dropped to 29% of its peak. My point? I think panic is premature and we'd be wise to not get too thrilled with cycling-related results from Google Trends.

Vampires Seem to be Disappearing from Texas!