Valentine’s Day presents challenges to many couples. I addressed the history of Valentine’s Day in a previous post. The map in that post featured popular gift related internet searches unique to each US state. I didn’t spend much time covering the idiosyncracies of the map, which in hindsight was missed opportunity. Despite being several years old, it remains the latest map I could find about the subject. FWIW, some of the searches matched expectations (Vermont, New Jersey, and North Dakota), others didn’t (Alabama & Montana), and some were a bit risque for a family oriented blog (Tennessee & Pennsylvania). Here’s a link to that blog – (What’s the Deal with Valentine’s Day?)
Today’s Trends
Our new map takes a broader approach. Instead of looking at searches for gifts, it features all Valentine’s Day searches in each state. This wider search hits on many of the expected topics, restaurants, cards, chocolate, and other gift ideas. Some even match the searches from the earlier map. Montana’s search for cooking lobster tail correlates quite well to the previous gift search about lobster tails. I’m not sure what to say about Arizona and Tennessee. I suppose it’s good that they’re concerned about health, but it’s not exactly a romantic topic.
Today’s first map, courtesy of satelliteinternet.
Now those of you more astute readers or those with nothing better to do than read my full posts, may have noted that I introduced the above map as our ‘first’ one of the day. That’s right, just in case you didn’t have enough clamoring for your precious spare brain cells, today I’m sharing two Valentine’s Day themed maps. To be honest, I’m not doing this out of an overly developed sense of generosity. No, I feel mildly bad that this post is a bit light on information and analysis. So, I’ve added a second map that breaks out the average amount spent on Valentine’s Day gifts by state.
Map courtesy of Finder.com.
For those truly desperate to fill time, do you see any interesting correlations between these maps? I found a few, especially if you include the third map from my previous post. Tennessee jumps out at me. STDs were the most searched term which seems to match their top gift item (see previous post). That said, $70-89 for said gift strikes me as not exactly cheap.
As always thanks for reading.
Armen
Note to pay the bills
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