Greece ranked 7th in the world list of countries that record most Internet searches for vacation, according to a Bloom Consulting company report on the branding of destinations.
Bloom Consulting, which has done previous country branding rankings, took a new approach to ranking which countries have the strongest brand reputations with its latest index released this month.
The company used search engine data to rank 180 countries according to their worldwide popularity, and skift.com commented that “there are never a shortage of factors contributing to travelers’ interests in and perceptions of destinations and one needs to look no further than keyword searches to illustrate this point.”
Five categories
Bloom Consulting gathered 1 billion online search keywords to rank countries in five categories: tourism, investment, talent, exports and national prominence and skift.com used the following example for the tourism category:
“Turkey ranks highest for ‘Visits’–does this mean that ‘Visit Turkey’ was a more popular search than ‘visit (any other country)’?” the index states. “Broadly speaking, yes. In the [index], the sub-category ‘Visit’ covers a range of generic search keywords that are related to things to do, places to visit, tourist attractions, etc. For example someone may search for ‘best things to do in Turkey,’ or ‘Turkey top tourist attractions.’ Out of all countries, Turkey has the largest amount of generic visit-related searches.”
“In comparison, Austria also has a lot of tourism-related searches, but most of them are specific, for skiing and mountain sports. This gives people a clear picture of ‘what Austria is,’ and a clear idea of its tourism offering. The concept is that all these actions/policies etc. trigger proactive interest. If you don’t Google, who cares? Whatever people see in the first pages of Google will influence their perceptions of a country.”
Strongest brands
The U.S. has the overall strongest brand based on search data, but it’s China that dominates with economics searches related to tourism.
Japan ranks in the top five in three of the five categories and is number two overall, number nine for talent searches and number eight for investment searches and has done well with previous country branding rankings in the past. Interestingly, the U.S. is first or second in every category except tourism, which includes keywords related to leisure and entertainment, outdoor activities and religion.
Bloom Consulting’s charts as follows:
Tourism Chart
General Chart
Exports Chart
Investments Chart
Talents Chart
Prosperity Chart
