Back in July we noticed that Google searches for the term “stem cells” were just about at their lowest level over the past 3.5 years. As you can see from the most recent chart above, it looks like that trend has turned around. That’s not really surprising given all the recent news. But the number of the searches was trending upward even before the last month.

A few more details — including the #1 city for stem cell searches — after the jump.

The current height is still far off the all-time high logged just before the 2004 US presidential election, but it does look to rank up among some of the highest points. It will be interesting to watch whether the searches crest here or continue upward.

Google Trends also lists the top regions and cities for search terms. The number one city for stem cell searches both all-time and during the last year is Madison, WI. That’s probably not a surprise given they have a bit of a vested interest there, but it is somewhat surprising only in that Madison is much smaller than other cities on the list (e.g., Boston and Philly). Also interesting, Madison didn’t rank this high when we looked back in July.

The number one state over the last year is Maryland, again not a surprise with NIH and all those government agencies there. But check out the #2 state: Iowa.

Caveats: Google doesn’t provide a frame of reference for the search results, so we’re not sure what the scale is for the Y axis in these graphs. Also, Google states that these graphs are estimations of search data and contain a certain number of approximations.

-Greg Dahlmann

graph: Google Trends