WWE SmackDown Google Search interest is down ahead of Punk vs Owens, and I don’t know why | Column

WWE SmackDown Google Search interest ahead of this week’s show is down -4% over the preceding 3 months and -4% vs the same period last year. The largest level of search interest in the show over the last 90 days was following the June 19 episode on June 20 (Saturday), which saw Cody Rhodes defend his WWE Championship against Gunther with Sami Zayn as the special guest referee.

Google Trends scores measure relative search (interest rather than the total number of searches) and the highest point in the selected location and period is assigned a score of 100. It’s not an exact science of knowing how much hype is around a certain event/weekly show, but it’s a good indicator.

Recent spikes

As I’ve already mentioned, it’s June 20 where the biggest 100/100 spike occurs, so that is likely people looking up highlights and results from the June 19 episode. Since then, the interest on Google search for SmackDown has hovered around the 60-75/100 range, with a one-off spike of 91/100 on July 18, which followed the Friday July 17 episode. That July 17 episode was the go-home show for Saturday Night’s Main Event on July 18, so again, it was probably people searching for highlights and the results ahead of the MSG show at the weekend.

The search interest being down since then is, honestly, a bit baffling. Kevin Owens returning at SummerSlam and becoming the #1 contender to the WWE Championship gave SmackDown a new storyline to run with in the main event, and CM Punk has been the catalyst for some big spikes this year, especially when he returned in Chicago on Raw. Basically, Punk getting a fresh feud will usually generate a lot of interest, both in him as a search term, the show he is on as a search term and his opponent. That hasn’t really happened here.

I expect that the number will jump again this Saturday after SmackDown tonight, but the fact that Search interest is low for SmackDown as a term, considering the build to Punk vs Owens, is a bit of an anomaly. I’ve put a comparison of WWE SmackDown as a term vs Kevin Owens as a term, and you can see that while Owens spiked during his return at SummerSlam, he too has fallen off in the weeks after:

WWE also released a hype package for the Punk vs Owens match around 13 hours ago (as of writing) and it has hit around 27k views on YouTube so far. Considering the lack of PLE for some time now and how (to be fair, well) built this match has been built, it’s really odd that it hasn’t drawn as much interest from general search as I was expecting.

I can’t even really point towards general sport getting in the way here, as the NFL season hasn’t started and we’re way off of the NBA picking up for the regular season again. Maybe nobody cares about a rivalry that started before some WWE fans were even born? Who knows.