Focus on Google's popular keywords: What are retail investors paying attention to?

Original title: Google Trends as a Retail Barometer: Key Insights
Original author: Stacy Muur, crypto researcher

Original translation: xiaozou, Golden Finance

Bitcoin is halfway through its second decade, and the 20th anniversary is not far away. During this period, the crypto world has also undergone unpredictable changes, influenced by market sentiment, political strategies, and the alternation of bull and bear market cycles.

Despite these fluctuations, new users continue to enter the crypto world through various channels. Which of them is the most popular? Let's explore the answer in this article.

1. Common keywords

To better understand the changes in user interests, I analyzed Google Trends over the past five years. This period covers both bull and bear market cycles, providing an objective perspective.

People frequently search for general concepts like “crypto,” “blockchain,” and “token.” As expected, the volume of searches for these keywords is proportional to the market’s upward movement.

But these searches don’t reveal intent. To better understand user interest, it’s helpful to take a closer look at intent-based searches.

Throughout history, the main uses of cryptocurrency have been trading, investing, and speculating. Airdrops followed closely behind, but not as popular as the more recently searched keywords like “trade” and “invest.” Nonetheless, passive income remains a topic of interest to cryptocurrency-savvy users.

2. Trading related queries

Since we are talking about trading, let’s go a step further and gain insight into user brand awareness and key entry paths.

User attention to topics related to CEX (centralized exchanges) and DEX (decentralized exchanges) reflects the dominance of CEX trading volume over DEX trading volume. Despite various opinions, DeFi is still a small part of the broader crypto market, and centralized exchanges like Binance should not be underestimated in this market.

Key Observations:

· CEX popularity peaked in late December 2019 and fell to a low in mid-March 2021.

· Binance has been leading in search interest for the top centralized exchanges in 2024.

· Interest in DEXs fell to a low in the summer of 2021 but reached an all-time high in late November 2024. This was likely driven by Bitcoin’s new bull run and a surge in meme coin activity on the Solana DEXs.

· Among the leading DEXs by TVL, PancakeSwap dominated search interest in May 2021. In December 2024, Uniswap took the lead, followed by Raydium.

· The popularity of crypto derivatives peaked in 2021, but protocols such as Hyperliquid have recently revived interest compared to Drift Protocol and Jupiter.

· The prediction market surged in November 2024, driven by Trump-related discussions on Polymarket. However, the popularity quickly declined, reflecting a similar trend to November 2020.

3. Token search trends

The search popularity of the word "crypto" is only comparable to that of "Bitcoin", which is the main query term for crypto-related topics.

Search popularity for Bitcoin peaked during the 2021 bull run and hit its lowest point at the end of 2019. Even after Bitcoin reached a price of $100,000 for the first time in late 2024, it failed to regain its former popularity.

Meanwhile, query frequency for other top market cap tokens, including Ethereum, remained relatively stable, although XRP has seen a significant increase following its recent rally.

4. Narrative popularity

When comparing user interest in major verticals such as DeFi, RWA, DePIN, GameFi, and the recently popular AI x Crypto, user interest in the first two is sustainable. In contrast, other fields rely more on hype.

Recently, there has been a surge in interest in the RWA and AI x Crypto fields, while DePIN, DeFi, and GameFi remain in the background.

The popularity of Meme coins soared to unprecedented levels at the end of 2024. At the same time, AI-related tokens are gathering attention, and March 2024 is a critical moment.

5. Keywords in 2024

Now that we have a general understanding of the current interest and major attention projects in Web3, let me share what are the most popular search queries in the crypto field at present (sorted by search query volume).

· Bitcoin — The Unrivaled Attention Magnet

· Ethereum

· DEX

· CEX

· L1 and L2 — Evenly Matched

· DeFi

· Altcoin

· RWA

· AI Agent

· Memecoin

· DePIN

· NFT

· GameFi

· Metaverse

Here are the biggest Web3 brands ranked:

· Bitcoin

· XRP

· TON

· Binance

· Ethereum

· Solana

· USDT

· TRON

· Bybit

· Metamask

· OKX

All other brand searches, including those frequently discussed on Crypto Twitter like Vitruals, Ethena, or any of the L2 chains, lag far behind the above brands.

What can you see?

Most topics discussed on Crypto Twitter do not reach a global audience. Retail investors still join the crypto world through centralized exchanges, and DeFi captures only a small portion of crypto interest. Many of today's hot brands are still beyond the retail audience.

Original link