With Naruto showing up in Yahoo’s top ten searches, discussion moved to who uses Yahoo anyway as if to dismiss it’s popularity. After all surely Google is the important search application nowadays?
Well I thought to check the Google Zeigeist, but that appears to be long gone, replaced by the wonderful Google Trends. And there we can see the power of Naruto.
Naruto vs. Yahoo’s top search, Britney Spears – A clear victory for Naruto, and we see that searches for “naruto” have been continually growing the last 4 years as opposed to Britney’s popularity ebbing and flowing with events in her life.
Now lets add the next three in their chart – Naruto is still on top. In fact it takes getting elected as President to push Barack Obama over our ninja chum.
And lets see how it compares to the two other big anime franchises that have hit the west – Overall Pokemon has Naruto beat over the last four years, but is in decline. Dragonball been maintaining a steady march for a franchise it’s age.
Looking at all these figures, is it any wonder that Viz & TV Tokyo are looking stream Naruto for free? If you’re getting that many searches for your product you want to aim them at your content – and in turn advertising. If any title can make that model work it’s Naruto.
One last thing, Naruto vs. One Piece vs. Bleach vs. Gintama (in Japanese) – here however Naruto is in decline, with Gintama being the series on the rise (from the sudden rise in 06, we can assume the anime has had a definite effect on its popularity). One Piece ebbs and flows but invariably is the most popular of the Shonen Jump properties (at least among folks who want to find information about it on the internet).