We soccer nuts know what the media refuses to believe. The MLS is Rising. Over at DCenters, D gave Google’s new trend analysis tool a spin to see how searches for MLS and NHL are trending. His results were surprising.

For those that were wondering when MLS would start to get the same
recognition as at least the NHL, wonder no more. It seems to have
happened, both nationally and locally,
at least in terms of search volume. Now, the NHL strike skewed things a
bit, but if you look at the last season (featuring the return from the
strike and the AO vs. Crosby rookie battle) you see that the NHL’s
search volume seem to be about the same as Major League Soccer.

However,
the NHL News Volume dwarfs that of Major League Soccer (not reflected
locally, but definitely nationally). What does this say to me? People
are equally interested in the NHL and MLS, but the news serves NHL fans
better. Something we’ve always thought, but never really had real data
to prove.

He then refines his searches even more to limit the analysis to the United States and also spelling out the league names. The USA trend is amazing. I never thought it would be that high. OK, I see much wasted time in my future. How about a 5-way analysis? You could spend days coming up with search phrases to compare. What a cool tool. If you come up with a cool comparison, post it over at D’s and let’s see what we come up with.

All the potential fun aside, the comparison of the search trends to the news trend is really frustrating. Sad to see the media with their head in the sand about more than just politics (why is he STILL referred to as a popular president?!?!?!) It will be very interesting to see the trends after the World Cup and if the press trends move downward or remain higher in the later months.

UPDATE: We Call It Soccer has some thoughts on search trends as well.

UPDATE 2: Looks like Big Soccer had some fun with Google Trends as well.