Yoga Trends in the World Study (2004-2011)

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“Google Trends” is a great tool to give us an insight into the world of yoga.   It gives us a very good grasp of what's going on.  In most countries, Google has been serving 60-75% of the search traffic from 2004 all the way to today, so its data is an accurate representation of what is happening online.  Although it won’t get us absolute numbers, only relative ones, these are perfectly sufficient for our needs. The data is normalized to the absolute number of searches at any given date, so if in total there were many fewer searches in 2004 as compared to 2011, that is taken into the account. Hence the name “trend”.

There is another tool called “Google Insight for Search”, which gives somewhat similar information, but could be more visually appealing to some. The advantage of that newer tool is that it also shows related searches. We found the data presented is not always identical between the two tools. So in this study we will be using both Google Trends and Google Insights for Search, depending on where we get a better data sample.

You will find that some of the information in this study is interesting and you might enjoy sharing it with others.  Some of it is more factual, and we hope that some may even help yoga studies make decisions about what to offer / what people are looking for.

Enjoy the read.

Table of Contents

Part One

1. Yoga versus the World
2. My Yoga is Better than Yours

Part Two

1. Yoga Teacher Training Trends
2. Yoga Gift Popularity Trends
3. Yoga Clothing Popularity Trends

Part Three

1. Yoga Products and Gear Popularity Trends
2. Yoga Kriya-s Accessory Trends
3. Yoga and Chocolate
4. For Posterity

For the Impatient

After reading this analysis of yoga trends, you’ll be able to answer some great yoga trivia questions, like:

1. What’s the yoga capital of Canada?
2. What happened in the yoga world on June 5th, 2011?
3. What is the top yoga related search in India?
4. What is the difference between aparigraha and santosha?
5. What happens when a yoga style or guru goes on Oprah?
6. What are the most popular search terms for yoga gifts? And
7. How are Yoga and chocolate related?

But if you don't have the time to read through this study here is a quick summary of the key factual details:

Countries where Yoga is most Popular in 2011:

1. Canada
2. India
3. United States

Cities where Yoga is most Popular in 2011:

1. Vancouver, BC, Canada
2. Calgary, BC, Canada
3. San Francisco, California, USA

Most Popular Yoga Styles Worldwide in 2011:

1. Bikram Yoga
2. Hot Yoga
3. Power Yoga

Most Popular Yoga Teacher Training in 2011:

1. Bikram Yoga Teacher Training
2. Ashtanga Yoga Teacher Training
3. Hot Yoga Teacher Training

Most Popular Yoga Clothing Brand in 2011:

1. Lululemon Yoga Clothing
2. Prana Yoga Clothing
3. Shakti Yoga Clothing

Most Popular Yoga Mat Brand in 2011:

1. Manduka Yoga Mats
2. Jade Yoga Mats
3. Gaiam and Lululemon Yoga Mats (break even)

If you want to dramatically increase interest in your Yoga style or product - get on the Oprah Winfrey show.

And, finally, Yoga appears to be almost as popular as chocolate (the latter beats yoga by 50%).

That's all you need to know, really.

If you want to see who didn't make it to the top three (but was close), discover more interesting details and curious facts about various Yoga styles or products or events that triggered a sudden interest in yoga, and learn what kind of information you can get using Google Trends as a research tool, read on: Yoga Trends Study Part One

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