"In Yahoo’s top product-related searches for 2005, Sony came in at sixth place overall, with the Xbox 360 in strong seventh.. The Nintendo Revolution and Sony PS3 were not searched for enough in 2005 to earn a spot on this year’s rankings. Only Apples’s hugle popular Ipod outranked the PSP and Xbox 360. This is interesting because search activity is a raw measure of general interest in a product.
Is it surprising that the PSP out ranked the Xbox 360 as a top search term in 2005? One interpretation is that searching tends to be driven by advertising and word of mouth, most of which coming after a product is launched. Since the PSP had more post-launch months in 2005, it is makes since that it would outrank the Xbox 360 which only had less than 2 months. If this particular interpretation is true, then the Xbox 360 has done nearly as well in one month as the PSP has done in nine months.
Another interpretation is that search activity is directly correlated to pre-launch hype. In other words, it’s the pre-launch buzz that really drove Yahoo’s search traffic. If this is the case, then the Xbox 360 underperformed versus the PSP. We can’t know for sure unless Yahoo wants to release the numbers behind their rankings.
Search results will be interesting to see once the PS3 and Nintendo Revolution are released later this year." [
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