Searches for African Internet related terms have increased year-over-year on the world's most popular search engine. Source: Google AdWords Keyword Tool

The following post is an update to last year’s “Trends from Google’s Keyword Tool” which looked at Google search trends relating to African Internet.

In general, more web searchers than ever are focused on Africa’s online world. Not only is the global (and African) Internet population increasing, but so is the interest in African ICT progress. Data from the Google AdWords Keyword Tool shows monthly trends in searches on the popular Google search engine. Searches for African mobile terms appear to have increased by 22% since November 2009. Searches for a variety of Internet terms have increased by an average of roughly 40%.

Also interesting is look at country-specific searches. Similar to last year, searches are more often focused on the country instead of the continent as a whole. This makes sense considering how ICT policy, infrastructure, and funding vary so widely among the African nations. Perhaps such findings also suggest that the global audience is beginning to understand that generalizations about the continent fall short when describing individual nations.

The table below shows year-over-year trends for terms relating to ‘africa internet’, ‘africa online’, ‘africa mobile’, ‘africa tech’, africa web’, africa broadband’, ‘africa wireless’, and ‘africa telecom’. The top 10 search terms within these keywords show a 43% YoY gain in popularity. The winner: ‘africa online’ which in September 2010 enjoyed more than double the search volume of September 2009.

The next table presents trends for terms relating to ‘[African country] online”. The results seem loosely correlated with population. Not surprisingly, Nigeria holds the top spot, followed by South Africa. Increases in searches for these nations are present across the board, although some trends (like Algeria’s 91% drop) should be viewed with a wary eye.

The next table presents trends for terms relating to ‘[African country] internet”. Trends nearly resemble those in the previous table albeit with a lower search volume.

The next table presents trends for terms relating to ‘[African country] ict”. Google only finds substantial search data for 25 nations. Out of this sub-set, Kenya and much of East Africa lead the other African nations. However, Southern African nations of Zimbabwe, Angola, and Namibia are showing strong percentage increases.