Chinese New Year is around the corner, and data obsessed Google has compiled a list of trends surrounding the celebration from around the Asia Pacific region. These trends have fewer numbers than what we’re used to seeing from Google, but it does provide some extremely interesting insights into the various Chinese communities across APAC.
Singapore may one of the smallest countries in this region, but it is also one of the most connected. According to Google, the island city state has the highest number of searches for ‘Chinese New Year’ in Asia Pacific. Malaysians are not left out, as we hold the second highest number of searches for the lunar new year; albeit at only half the total of the Singaporeans. We guess that some people really want those angpau.
Speaking of the red packets; the number of searches for ‘angpao’ have grown by 12.5 times year on year. Interestingly, a large number of these searches seem to be coming from the world’s largest muslim population: Indonesia. At the same time, searches for the mandarin name for red packets have tripled.
Other searches related to the Chinese New Year have also increased steadily. The number of people searching for the generic “gong xi fa cai” greeting has doubled in 2016; as has the number of people looking up the new Chinese zodiac. The Philippines has the highest spike of Chinese zodiac searches around the celebration time, although Singaporeans are the most consistent in their interest in the zodiac.
Google’s internal data has turned up one last tidbit of information about the lunar new year. It turns out that there is a 10-percent spike in Youtube traffic from Hong Kong during Chinese New Year; most of which happens to come from mobile devices. We have no idea what this means, but it probably confirms what your parents have been saying about young people and smartphones.
[Source: Google]
