As the dog days of summer draw to a close, Google has released an interesting post on its official blog showing search trends in the Northern Hemisphere over the summer through Google Maps.
The Google blog post, titled "Google Maps shows us how we spent summer 2012" reads:
"Before we approach the official end of summer on September 21, our Google Maps team thought it'd be fun to see how those of us in the Northern Hemisphere have spent the dog days. To do this, we reviewed the summer search activity on maps.google.com in several countries between the end of May and the beginning of September."
View the full chart here.
This summer's heat was no slouch, setting many records on fire. As such, it's no surprise that people wanted to cool off. Beach queries were highest in Canada and Spain, followed by France, with the United States and Netherlands in third place. Italy ranked 8th in beach searches.
Those in the United Kingdom, where temperatures were slightly cooler, seemed to look for more indoor activities such as squash.
In the United States, the top-rising search queries was "paintball." The keywords "campground," "beach," and "golf course" followed. "Motels and hotels" rounded out the top five.
The most popular landmarks searched in the United States were "Death Valley," followed by "Redwood National Park," "Yosemite National Park," "Sequoia National Park." The only non-outdoors places that rounded out the list were the "Empire State Building," and "Times Square." It looks like Americans either went outdoors, or to New York City.
Our northern neighbor, Canada followed a similar trend, with most of the searches relating to the outdoors.
Mexico, however, seemed a little more concerned, and less on vacation, with the words "universidad" and "banco" included in the 'top-rising searches' list by Google.