The Vocal Internet Anime Effect Via Googlefighting
I have done almost no research on this topic, but it’s definitely the case that some loud, vocal minority tend to speak for a quiet but much larger group of people. On the internet, however, is this the case?
In context of, say, “what is a popular anime” question, I think the internet is probably overall a reliable marker. To use a random metric, Google estimated hit counts for example, Naruto and Bleach both are in the tens of millions of results. Given the similarity of their titles and the way they are marketed in English, plus some other factors, it seems like a comparable result. In detail, Naruto has twice as many hits on Google as Bleach on the internet, and that seems to reflect my own experience as exposed to fans and marketing to both shows in terms of how frequent I run into that. However inaccurate googling “bleach” is, sharing a name with a common household chemical.
Googlefighting only goes so far, of course; the complex methodology of search makes it a tricky metric to do serious study. For example, Higashi no Eden gives you a strange set of results; query based on the English title “Eden of the East” will include largely “East of Eden” hits, bumping probably a good half to one and a half million relevant hits to somewhere around 20-30 million. You know this 20-30 mil number is impossible, when a more popular TV show, Gintama, only scores in the 2-3 million range. Gintama also is a simple keyword so you know it probably includes most if not all English language hits. Just for fun, a cursory search of “ippo” yields about 2-3 million hits; Basquash yields just over half a million; Fullmetal Alchemist gives over five, where as Full Metal Alchemist gives over eight big ones, a 3 million increase for inserting a single space. I can’t even really google “K-ON” since that just breaks the search. Let’s not even get me started on having ‘ in the title. (FYI, ハルヒ is over 11 million in comparison to Haruhi’s paltry 4 to 5, but obviously it’s not exactly an unique name.)
How do we determine what is popular on the internet? Oricon daily sales rank for singles? Font size on a tag cloud off anano? Weekly Nicovideo ranking? Or taking a step back, how do we divide up the internet to manage search in a sensible way? Language? Then what’s next?
Is there a point to this exercise? Yeah–internet metrics are tricky. JP is big on regional counts for torrent tracker stats, for example (although that is something you could account for), so that’s one example where some pretty solid indication of popularity can be seriously misinterpreted. But how do we identify the different signals (through a bunch of tubes) on the internet and figure out which group of people is saying what? Perhaps one way is to self-authenticate your own opinions? Identify who you are along with what you want? Seems like a sound technique to get your point across in general.
I wonder if there are other studies like this, no matter how informal. The interplay between the different layers of anime fans and how international voices bleed together, sometimes across language barriers, is pretty complicated but also interesting.
For series with unique enough names that don’t suffer much variation between languages, the Google rank might be a fair indication; for everything else, I’d fall back on torrent counts unless you wanted to test out Google ranks for things like “Bleach anime” and “Haruhi Suzumiya.” You could also consider the popularity of blogged titles in the way Anime Nano! does, though I don’t think the population of anibloggers is a good representation of otaku on the Internet in general.
I think it’s interesting that that space makes so much of a difference for FMA. Even though the popular acronym is three characters, I was under the impression that most people used “Fullmetal Alchemist.” Then again, it could also be the difference between Inuyasha and Inu Yasha (and InuYasha?).
Interesting issue to consider. The best way, might be to take a large enough random sample of anime fans and poll what they like at the moment. Only it might not be possible to do that without getting a skewed sample, like anime bloggers might prefer more high brow shows to a 12 year old (really?). I think torrent has its limitations, as if a show has other forms of downloads or has strict legal control, the download number might be lower.
Finally, I find that google these days is getting clogged up with rubbish listings, either fake or just ads. What if a show is popular but not really worth discussing, while another show is sucky and everyone hates on it?
http://myanimelist.net/anime.php?popular
The list is suspect, but it is as good a starting point as any. Plus, the sample set is in the right space.
@intro
LOL, nice tip. I personally would point to ANN’s ranking system also, since mapping popularity and popular acclaim (not critical acclaim!) might be something worth looking into. But it’s like what TJ said that such sampling (ANN or MAL) will carry a significant bias. Plus, I’m kind of interested in the data left out from some social circles. Sites like MAL and ANN are easy to access and we get our innate notion of what’s popular or good from those sites, so it may be instructive to hear from some other medium or large online community that says otherwise.
@tj_han
I think looking at tracker (and other) distro stats has less of a sampling bias, but that’s pretty much it. You are right that a lot of external factors plays on it too, but I think how widely distributed something is, once we get beyond a certain level of distribution, it’s a good indicator of actual popularity.
Google getting clogged up is not a real concern once there’s enough statistics beyond a cursory level. They are actually on guard on this and I think that kind of systematic error can be easily accounted for.
@kiri
Yea, there’s a lot of nuances to use google trending to compare popularity, even if it’s oh so easy…
If this was an easily answerable question there would be a lot of unemployed marketing people. :)
Our experiment was mainly an attempt to get discussions like this going becuase I think it is a fascinating subject. Like how many anime fans are watching say K-ON? It seems crazy popular according to the number of blog and people on twitter talking about it. But is it really all that popular here in the US? I have no idea but I would like to know.
There is always that darn odd nearly silent casual anime fan that does not go on the Internet much and only occasionally goes to anime cons if at all. But they hardly count as a Internet popularity. How much they are a part of overall popularity is beyond me but an interesting question as well.
It’s not something I’ve looked into much, but XDCC bots maintain download counts for the files on offer. And it just so happens that a sizable amount of distribution is centralized, so if someone doesn’t have stats already, it should be possible to get them.
I don’t think XDCC bots are particuarly unique compared to torrents. It has the same type of sampling bias, even if it’s a different bias (if not all together different).
Depends on a lot of other factors, as usual…
It always fascinates me when the list of the Top 10 or Top 20 or whatever selling manga gets released courtesy of ICv2 or something like that, because the top entries are almost never EVER the shows that completely take the Internet by storm. Titles you virtually hear nobody talk about such as Karas, Batman: Gotham Knight, Afro Samurai, The Animatrix, and the select few other titles designed to appeal to wider audiences are usually what are in the top 10. Meanwhile, Internet anime fan favorites like Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Azumanga Daioh, Haruhi Suzumiya, and so on are usually FAR lower down. It’s not like those rankings don’t count online vendors like TRSI or Amazon or whatever, so either it’s a case of “highly vocal/visible minority” or “everyone holds onto their fansubs instead of buying it.”
Perhaps it’s a combination of both; a highly vocal/visible minority that then proceeds to not buy stuff? That group certainly exists in some capacity, and what makes this bunch so nefarious is that whenever the Japanese come to America for an anime convention, all they see are these people and so they mistakenly assume everyone’s like that. Trouble is, much like how anime con attendees aren’t a representative sample of anime fans in the US, even in 2009 Internet communities are still not a representative sample of anime fans in the US.
Popularity doesn’t always equal to sales. It’s one of the implicit factor about counting download counts on bittorrent sites or xdcc bots. One example comes to mind: while shows like Afro Samurai and Animatrix may be more monetarily successful, I’m not sure if shows like Princess Mononoke or Howl’s Moving Castle, which may be less commercially successful (if at all?), are less popular. All signs points otherwise, actually.
It’s also a marginal popularity issue. If we define popularity in a uniform sense, obviously shows like Saint Seiya is not popular in America and Canada compared to Mexico or Brazil. But can we make a statement about Saint Seiya being unpopular? When we’re talking crap on the internet we have to remember its borderlessness.
[…] be one of the big hits of the season, at least according to the AnimeNano tags (a statistic which Omo suggests indicates very little). I just think that DEEN had a great opportunity with a big name […]