This morning I was looking at Google’s “Insights for Search” site when I came across something very surprising.

Google give an example of their ability to display the popularity of search terms in a time series, comparing countries .  They used the word “soccer” to illustrate this and showed Brazil, Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom.  There were some interesting results, including the fact that the UK was showing a far lower popularity for this search term – nigh on impossible, I thought.

Why?  And then it struck me.  Even Google had got it badly wrong (depending on what they were thinking to show, but assuming they were advising on how to research popular terms).

Hardly anyone in the UK would ever search Google for “soccer”.  It’s a word that’s scarcely ever used except by visiting Americans.  Without knowing the translation into Portuguese, Italian and German I suspect the same would be true there also.  The game is “FOOTBALL” virtually everywhere in the world except the USA, where they’ve co-opted the word for their own local game.

The lesson – Don’t assume just because a keyword has a particular meaning, or is commonly used, in your own country that it has the same meaning in the wider world.