‘Turkey’ searches on Google experience annual surge

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Sorry, Istanbul, we’re looking for the bird.

Despite there being an entire country named Turkey, it’s the yearly American Thanksgiving traditions that leads to a huge boost in Google searches for the term.

Check out the graph at the top illustrating searches for the word ‘turkey’ over the last five years, courtesy of Google Trends.

As you can see, the massive jolt comes around Thanksgiving every year and a smaller one comes around Christmas time.

Google hasn’t yet updated its search statistics for today, but we can already see an uptick toward the end of the graph.

Over the last five years, Turkey the country has maintained the top spot where people are searching for ‘turkey,’ followed by Britain and the U.S. But during November, it’s USA all the way.

‘Tryptophan,’ the amino acid that causes drowsiness after large consumptions of turkey, also sees a stratospheric jump in late-November. We’re surprised Web surfers manage to stay awake long enough to type that in -- let alone spell it correctly.

-- Mark Milian
twitter.com/markmilian