Searching for Santa on Google

The curious nature of kids when using Google to investigate Santa.

Santa taking a well deserved break
from his present delivering duties.

In one of my previous posts, I mentioned that as well as the Google search engine, Google also have a service known as the Google Keyword Tool which allows you to analyse how many searches a particular search term gets on Google every month.

Some of the search terms I discussed were the search term, ‘Is Santa real?’, which gets 301,000 searches every month from quizzical and possibly sceptical kids, and also, ‘What is Santa’s real phone number?’, which gets 320 searches per month.

As it’s only a few days until Christmas I therefore thought this would be an appropriate time to feature another post on Santa related searches on Google.

The most popular Santa themed Google search I could find was the massively popular, ‘Where is Santa at?’, which gets an incredible 83,100,000 searches every month. By comparison the search term, ‘What’s the true meaning of Christmas?’, gets a paltry 170 searches per month, so it’s nice to know that modern kids seem to have their priorities straight!

Another reasonably popular search term was the search, ‘What is Santa’s address?’, which gets on average 12,100 searches every month. Perhaps a sign of the times though, is the fact that ‘e-mail Santa’ gets almost ten times that amount with an impressive ‘110,000’ searches every month.

Santa and friends.

Another search term which perhaps shows that many kids are apparently aware of the need to tighten our belts during the current global economic downturn, is the search term:

‘Free letter from Santa’

Not just a letter from Santa, but a free letter from Santa. This gets an average of 22,200 searches per month. Over a quarter of these searches (6,600 to be precise) are made in the UK, so kids in the UK in particular are obviously being brought up to appreciate that times are hard and they should always therefore try to save money whenever they can … even apparently when contacting Santa Claus.

Rather disappointingly, a search term which gets 320 searches every month is the phrase, ‘wright a letter to Santa.’ I think before ‘wrighting’ a letter to Santa those particular kids should get some extra spelling lessons otherwise they might end up with an egg box instead of an Xbox.

A selection of other search terms which illustrate the curious nature of kids are:

The true meaning of Santa Claus.

How old is Santa? - 40,500 searches per month

Why is Santa fat? – 8,100

True meaning of Santa Claus – 73 (I think this one is a case of kids getting their expressions mixed up.)

Where does Santa go first? – 170

Is Santa real or is it your parents? – 110

How does Santa get around the world in one night? – 46

How does Santa get in without a chimney? – 170

In this modern age of chimneyless houses, I would have thought that last one would have been a concern on the minds of many kids in the approach to Christmas time. Apparently though, with only 170 monthly searches it would seem that kids nowadays don’t question the practicalities of Santa’s responsibilities as much as we did when I was a kid.

And when it comes to the question, ‘How does Santa get around the world in one night?’, kids are of course forgetting that not every country in the world is in the same time zone, so in effect this gives Santa an extra 23 hours to get his presents delivered.

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That's all for this week. I hope everyone has a fudgetastically muffinablous Christmas!

Anyone wanting a further fix of Santa statistics can find more information below:
Christmas statistics
Christmas 'higher or lower' quiz