Washington D.C., Jun 20, 2011 / 13:07 pm
U.S. Google search queries on Catholic topics have dropped “significantly” in volume from 2004 to 2011 and are “perhaps disturbing evidence” about the intersection of faith and new media, a researcher on Catholic demographics says.
“Is this cause to panic? Certainly not. Should we be concerned? Yes,” said Mark M. Gray, a research associate at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate in Georgetown.
Gray created graphs from Google search statistics which used the term “Catholic” in them, such as “Catholic school,” “Catholic Church,” and “Catholic Charities.” The graphs show a continued linear decline downward since 2004. The search volume dipped below average in 2007.
“Americans are significantly less likely to search for anything Catholic than they were seven years ago,” he said at Nineteen Sixty-four, the research blog of CARA.