Geocaching - Google Trends

[+BaylorGrad]

Not sure that this has been looked at / discussed recently, so I thought I'd add a topic for those of us who are data/statistics junkies. (If that's not you, it's ok--we all like different things. )

 

Given the recent popularity of Pokemon Go and its obvious parallels to Geocaching, I decided to take a quick look at Google Trends to see how the search term "Geocaching" has changed over the years. Here's the chart that appears, showing the relative popularity of Geocaching as a search term over the past decade or so.

 

 

A few things I noticed:

1) Geocaching as a search term peaked during the summer of 2011, and has declined every year since then. (Notice that I'm not drawing any conclusions here--I will let you do that.)

2) Since the onset of smart phones (and the Geocaching app?) in 2009 there has been a very recognizable pattern.

3) That recognizable pattern is really interesting, and perplexing to me. In general, each year shows dual peaks in April and August, with dual valleys in December and February. (Perhaps climate in the Northern Hemisphere has a lot to do with this? But if so, why the double peaks and double valleys? Why a small increase from December to January each year? And why is there a small dip in June/July each year?)

 

This stuff just fascinates the heck out of me.

 

Now in case anyone wants to be amused (or depressed), here's a comparison of the search term "Geocaching" (blue) versus the term "Pokemon Go" (red).

 

 

Any thoughts?

[+SwineFlew]

Someone missed the boat.

[+SwineFlew]

I noticed that geocaching is dying in the last two years and its going to get worse. There are many reason for this. I still play the game, but not like I used to because I am busy. In my area, my reviewer is archived more caches than publishing them. This is only for my area and I dont know about other area.

[SicilianCyclops]

Pokemon Go was just released. There's no point in comparing the two at this juncture. People will no doubt tire of Go in the coming months.

[RosAndEd]

Twin peaks due to Easter and Summer school holidays?

[+Manville Possum]

In my area we have more being archived and ones that are missing and need to be archived than ones being published by a long shot.

 

Everbody here seems to be joining in on the Pokémon Go.... and I just caught one in my living room!

[Thore]

I think you had it with the seasonal pattern.

Higher interest in April due the onset of warmer weather and people thinking they need to do more outside. So they talk about their resolution and some friend introduces them to GC, so they google it. August is main vacation month, so again, what to do? Let's google GC.

December is holiday season, so people have other things on their mind and February is probably the day with most snow days and the lousiest of weather patterns.

 

However all of that is assuming that there is a causality and not just a correllation ;-)

 

That's my story and I am sticking to it...

 

Thore

[+SwineFlew]

Pokemon Go was just released. There's no point in comparing the two at this juncture. People will no doubt tire of Go in the coming months.

Yes or no. The trading thing is coming up and that will keep people around. Getting people to pay for cheat and etc is the next step to keep people in the game. This is where GS fail, keep people in the game. Of what I see, many new people will clear out the area and they are done. Pokemon isnt like that, it keeps you busy even you dont have to spend ton of money on gas.

 

Plus, pokemon go havent been release world wide yet...so it will go up some more. Since the release in USA, they said they got some work(more servers I assume) to do before releasing in another country.

[+BaylorGrad]

Pokemon Go was just released. There's no point in comparing the two at this juncture. People will no doubt tire of Go in the coming months.

 

Of course it's too early. My intention was purely comedic effect. Of course that graph will look completely different in another week, month, year, etc.

[+BaylorGrad]

I think you had it with the seasonal pattern.

Higher interest in April due the onset of warmer weather and people thinking they need to do more outside. So they talk about their resolution and some friend introduces them to GC, so they google it. August is main vacation month, so again, what to do? Let's google GC.

December is holiday season, so people have other things on their mind and February is probably the day with most snow days and the lousiest of weather patterns.

 

However all of that is assuming that there is a causality and not just a correllation ;-)

 

That's my story and I am sticking to it...

 

Thore

 

That sounds good to me, so we'll go with it! Also--and perhaps this is just my guess from living in TX--perhaps the dip in June/July is due to the heat. (Same reason there's a dip in February.) I can see there being an increase in August as kids and families realize there's only another 1-5 weeks before school starts again.

[+Pine and Poplar]

The slow dropoff was something I also noticed with the number of active caches around the world. Back in 2011, I did a presentation for school and using the numbers from the way back machine, the total number of active geocaches seemed to be following an exponential growth curve. When I rediscovered the spread sheet recently and plugged in a few newer numbers, the growth had slowed down a bit and was definitely not exponential anymore. It may be due to declining interest or it may just be a function of increased cache saturation.

[+AustinMN]

Seriously, how many of us Google "Geocaching"?

 

What it shows is the number of people interested in joining the game. It doesn't reflect the people who have been doing it for years. There might be a slowdown in the rate of growth, but in the absence of retention/attrition data, the only conclusion one can come to from the overall trend is that there may be a decrease in the rate of growth.

[+SwineFlew]

Seriously, how many of us Google "Geocaching"?

 

What it shows is the number of people interested in joining the game. It doesn't reflect the people who have been doing it for years. There might be a slowdown in the rate of growth, but in the absence of retention/attrition data, the only conclusion one can come to from the overall trend is that there may be a decrease in the rate of growth.

I use google to find caches. I always use Geocaching as one of the key words.

[+Mudfrog]

Seriously, how many of us Google "Geocaching"?

 

What it shows is the number of people interested in joining the game. It doesn't reflect the people who have been doing it for years. There might be a slowdown in the rate of growth, but in the absence of retention/attrition data, the only conclusion one can come to from the overall trend is that there may be a decrease in the rate of growth.

 

I think you are right in that most of us who already geocache, rarely google it.

 

But, and i have no numbers, geocaching as a whole has and is slowing down. There may be more app users coming on board on a given day but the majority aren't sticking with it. Too many just give it up in a week, a month, maybe two. Like others have mentioned, the archiving of caches is happening much more often than the publishing of new ones around here. My thinking, it's sad but on par because of Groundspeak's change of philosophy over recent years.

[+BaylorGrad]

I think you all are hitting on the same topic--which is that we can draw correlations here, but not causation. All we know objectively is that the term is searched less and less each year over the last 6 years.

 

Certainly, it's likely that this reflects some sort of decline (such as "less growth" even if it's still technically growing).

 

To take things up a notch, here's the Google Trend data for the search term "geocaching.com"--I think this should be much more of a concern to those who are worried about the future of the hobby... This would likely eliminate people who are casually interested in learning what Geocaching even is--and only includes people who are actively looking for the website itself. A small nuance, but one nonetheless.

 

[+niraD]

My thought is that there may be fewer news articles about the "new outdoor hobby" because geocaching isn't so new and unusual any more.

 

So fewer people are reading articles that talk about geocaching.

 

So fewer people are Googling the term "geocaching".

[+hal-an-tow]

Interesting : I was looking for some statistics for a presentation on caching and at Project GC (look for Statistics, general, overview) the UK numbers for cache setting, finding and number of active cachers are all falling. I didn't look to see it I could access any other areas info though.

[+narcissa]

I suspect that the headlong rush to app-ify the game means that most newcomers are introduced to the game through boring, low quality, unoriginal caches that don't give them any reason to keep going. When I found my first few caches, I thought it was cool because of the personal touches and unique hiding spots. If my first geocache had been 10 identical tubes carelessly ziptied to 10 identical trees, I doubt it would have captured my interest.

[+Mudfrog]

I suspect that the headlong rush to app-ify the game means that most newcomers are introduced to the game through boring, low quality, unoriginal caches that don't give them any reason to keep going. When I found my first few caches, I thought it was cool because of the personal touches and unique hiding spots. If my first geocache had been 10 identical tubes carelessly ziptied to 10 identical trees, I doubt it would have captured my interest.

 

Definitely agree! On my first few caches, there were two things that made geocaching exciting and interesting for me. The first was thinking how cool it was to use satellites and a gpsr to find the container. The second, finding those containers of decent size which gave me the feeling that i was finding something that a person put some thought into hiding.

 

If i started caching today, i'm sure i'd still think it cool using sats and gpsr but at the same time, i would have gotten bored quickly and dropped the game.

 

I had never thought of geocaching as being a fad. Because of the creativity, the challenges, and the nice places it offered up, i thought of it as a hobby that i wanted to put time and effort into. Now,,, it's just a points scoring game with people finding stuff they'd normally not be interested in at all.

[+TheVoytekBear]

I suspect that the headlong rush to app-ify the game means that most newcomers are introduced to the game through boring, low quality, unoriginal caches that don't give them any reason to keep going. When I found my first few caches, I thought it was cool because of the personal touches and unique hiding spots. If my first geocache had been 10 identical tubes carelessly ziptied to 10 identical trees, I doubt it would have captured my interest.

 

Definitely agree! On my first few caches, there were two things that made geocaching exciting and interesting for me. The first was thinking how cool it was to use satellites and a gpsr to find the container. The second, finding those containers of decent size which gave me the feeling that i was finding something that a person put some thought into hiding.

 

If i started caching today, i'm sure i'd still think it cool using sats and gpsr but at the same time, i would have gotten bored quickly and dropped the game.

 

I had never thought of geocaching as being a fad. Because of the creativity, the challenges, and the nice places it offered up, i thought of it as a hobby that i wanted to put time and effort into. Now,,, it's just a points scoring game with people finding stuff they'd normally not be interested in at all.

 

One of the first caches I did with my friend that I was introducing to geocaching was a brick empty inside hidden in a XI century castle wall. The guy has been in the game since then (although has less time for it than I do). It's obvious that you don't take a new person to a power trail but rather to caches in interesting places (or multicaches). But power trails are good too. I sometimes like to take a walk and boost the stats in the process and there is nothing bad in that (PT's and PT-like series are usually located in forests or other nature connected areas here).

Edited July 13, 2016 by TheVoytekBear

[+MasterFred]

Well I think, there actually is correlation between Google Requests on something and how much it is practiced.

But this is only a tendence.

And if you look up Google Trends for "biking" for example, then the peak is in July 2004 and the yearly peak is falling each year, the peak in 2015 (also in July) was only 41 % of the interest compared to 2004.

And I don't think that the number of people biking has decreased that intensely

[+CanadianRockies]

All we know objectively is that the term is searched less and less each year over the last 6 years.

Actually, we don't know that. What we know is that the percentage of Google searches that include the term "geocaching" has gone down over the last 6 years. If the number of Google searches has increased over the last 6 years (which seems likely), then it's possible that the number of Google searches for "geocaching" has stayed constant or even increased.

Edited July 17, 2016 by CanadianRockies

[+BaylorGrad]

All we know objectively is that the term is searched less and less each year over the last 6 years.

Actually, we don't know that. What we know is that the percentage of Google searches that include the term "geocaching" has gone down over the last 6 years. If the number of Google searches has increased over the last 6 years (which seems likely), then it's possible that the number of Google searches for "geocaching" has stayed constant or even increased.

 

Hey CanadianRockies,

 

If I'm understanding correctly, you're saying that Google Trends reflects the percentage of X term compared to total Google searches? Instead of the actual numerical value?

 

If that's the case, Google Trends is entirely misleading. I'm interested to know where/how you discovered this.

[+CanadianRockies]

All we know objectively is that the term is searched less and less each year over the last 6 years.

Actually, we don't know that. What we know is that the percentage of Google searches that include the term "geocaching" has gone down over the last 6 years. If the number of Google searches has increased over the last 6 years (which seems likely), then it's possible that the number of Google searches for "geocaching" has stayed constant or even increased.

If I'm understanding correctly, you're saying that Google Trends reflects the percentage of X term compared to total Google searches? Instead of the actual numerical value?

 

If that's the case, Google Trends is entirely misleading. I'm interested to know where/how you discovered this.

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