Online searches for information about parenting, “Linsanity” and cherry blossoms gained in popularity among Taiwanese in the first quarter of this year, Yahoo-Kimo said yesterday.
The five most popular keyword searches for Taiwanese Internet users and advertisers during the period were travel, gaming, pregnancy-parenting, Jeremy Lin (林書豪) and fitness-weight loss, in that order, Yahoo-Kimo said.
Eponine Chen (陳婉怡), senior director of Yahoo-Kimo search marketing, said the popularity of the keywords “travel” and “gaming” showed that the unusually long Lunar New Year holiday helped stimulate private consumption and that both outdoor and indoor leisure activities have faithful fans.
According to the lunar calendar, this year is the Year of the Dragon, which is considered an auspicious period for childbirth.
“This belief is illustrated by the increased volume of [searched for] related keywords,” Chen said.
For example, the number of searches using the keywords “pregnancy” and “postnatal care center” increased by 100 percent and 160 percent respectively during the first quarter compared with last year.
Last month, the number of searches using keywords such as “powdered milk” and “cord blood” grew by more than 70 percent from January, part of which was still in the Year of the Rabbit, Chen said.
The number of searches for children’s car seats soared 210 percent last month year-on-year, Chen said. These figures all pointed to the business opportunities brought about by the “Dragon baby” craze, she added.
Meanwhile, the eruption of Linsanity last month quickly made the first Taiwanese-American NBA player’s name, in either Chinese or English, the fourth-most popular keyword in the first quarter of the year, Chen said.
“The number of Jeremy Lin-related searches once exceeded 300,000 in a single week,” Chen said.
With the arrival of warmer weather in recent weeks, searches for cherry blossoms have boomed, which should help domestic tourism, Chen said. This is reflected in a 21 percent annual growth in searches for cherry blossoms, she added.
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