Investors on Google are 18x more interested in buying Bitcoin than Apple stock

A recent study has revealed that investors are 18 times more interested in buying Bitcoin compared to Apple stock.

The report compiled by BitStacker.com gathered information from Google Trends. It looked at how people across the world searched for keywords relating to buying Bitcoin, Apple, Tesla, Amazon and Microsoft stocks.

The data was collected from the last 12 months, between January 23, 2022, to January 21, 2023.

It used a score to represent the average interest over this time period, with a value of 100 representing the peak popularity of the search term, whereas a value of 50 would show that the term is half as popular. A search term with a score of zero would mean that the term didn’t have any interest on the search engine.

How Google Trends was used to identify Bitcoin’s search popularity

During the specified time period, Bitcoin enjoyed the greatest popularity compared to other assets such as stocks for Tesla, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple. This is because the term ‘buy btc’ earned an average Google Trends score of 55 between January 23, 2022 and January 21 2023. This was a 6.88 times higher score compared to the next term on the list which was ‘buy TSLA’ that showed that interest in Tesla stock achieved an average score of eight over the same time period.

Next on the list was the search term ‘buy amzn’ which received a score of five which was an 11-times lower score for people interested in Amazon stocks compared to buying Bitcoin.

Microsoft was another tech stock that experienced much less interest compared to the cryptocurrency. The report found that the term ‘buy msft’ had a Google Trends average score of four over the past year which is a 13.75-times lower score than that of ‘buy btc’.

Finally, Apple stock ranked lowest on the list of search terms with ‘buy aapl’ getting a Google Trends average score of just three in the specified time period. This was a score 18.33 times lower than that of Bitcoin.

Correlating search term popularity with return on investment

The report also revealed some interesting links between people’s internet searches and the assets’ return on investment in 2023 so far. Bitcoin once again outshone the featured tech stocks as it has enjoyed a 38.57% return on investment in the year to date. This mirrors its search term popularity although it’s worth noting that the study was carried over a longer time period than just 2023 so far.

This corresponds to varying fortunes for tech stocks in the first few weeks of 2023. Amazon has enjoyed the greatest return to investment with an increase of 15.77%, while Tesla has been close behind with a rise of 8.31%

It hasn’t been quite so satisfactory for Microsoft as the tech giant has only seen a modest return on investment of 0.17% in the year so far. While Apple was at the bottom of the study’s report regarding search term popularity, the brand has experienced a return on investment of 6.11% in 2023 to date.

Continued demand for cryptocurrencies

Interestingly, the figures showed that people in African countries such as Nigeria and Ghana searched for the term, ‘buy BTC’ most. Other high ranking countries included the likes of St Helena, Cameroon and Cyprus.

This goes against the prevailing negative mood over cryptocurrencies that defined 2022. Last year featured multiple bankruptcies and hacks in the cryptocurrency sector that caused a negative outlook for all major coins such as Bitcoin. However, with an increase in Google searches for Bitcoin, it seems as though the original cryptocurrency could become a new kind of digital gold once more.