Who's Interested in Tarot?

Google Trends, a new service, makes it easy to find out:

a) how the level of interest in a particular topic is changing over time, and

b) the cities and countries where interest in a particular topic is highest.

You know me. I just had to do a Google Trends search on "tarot!"

What i discovered may surprise you.

Some U.S. publishers have warned that "interest in Tarot is trending down." But the Google Trends graph actually shows gentle, gradual increase in the number of Tarot-related searches.

But here's even bigger news! Take a look at the list of the top ten countries where Tarot searches originate:

1. Chile
2. Argentina
3. Turkey
4. Columbia
5. Peru
6. Mexico
7. Venezuela
8. Portugal
9. Spain
10. France

Hmmm. Notice any fifty-state, predominantly English-speaking countries missing?

As Tarot people, we're usually pretty interested in forecasting the future. Given this data, what might we see on the horizon as the "future of Tarot?" Some guesses:

- Tarot authors and teachers with the ability to speak Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish (!), or French may be better positioned to tap into lucrative markets than those who speak only English.

- Tarot book publishers (Llewellyn, are you listening?) may well be able to boost profits by translating more and more of their books into Spanish.

- Instead of struggling to drag twenty people out to a Tarot talk in Hot Coffee, Mississippi, maybe I should consider pursuing workshops in Valdivia and Santiago (Chile), Montevideo (Uruguay), Buenos Aires (Argentina), and Istanbul (Turkey).

If nothing else, this information is a good reminder that the market for Tarot books, decks, and products is much, much larger than interest in the U.S. may indicate. And while collecting more data would be a really good idea (you can't base your entire life -- or business model -- on one Google Trends search), initial results suggest that folks really passionate about Tarot would do well to look south ... toward Mexico and South America, to be exact.

Me? I'm packed and ready to go -- I've been itching to do workshops in foreign countries. How about "The Least You Should Know about Tarot" in Montevideo? How about "Tarot and Tea" ... in Turkey?

Comments

[Elaine]

What's interesting is that there's different patterns on searches if you use 'tarot decks' instead of 'tarot cards'. Things go back to US states for one, and the pattern shifts on the screen.

[James D. Wickson]

The term "tarot decks" is inherently US biased! The word "decks" is used by American speakers of English. Spanish speakers would use "barajas" and the English speakers of other countries such as the UK use "packs"