The growth of the sport

[Master Roshambollah]

While poking around in a backchannel forum of worldrps.com, I ran across the following Google statistics.  I did a search for various rps-related terms in February of 2006, just over three years ago.  Here are the terms with the number of Google hits:

usarps - 429
wrpss - 455
worldrps - 17,600
roshambollah - 924
"C. Urbanus" - 666

The irony of C. Urbanus recieving the same number of hits as the "number of the beast" was not lost on me.  Perhaps it wasn't that ironic. 

I thought it would be interesting to search for the same terms again, and quantify the changes.  Here are the new number of Google hits, along with a percentage increase.

usarps - 8950 (up 2086%)
wrpss - 117,000 (up 25714%)
worldrps - 321,000 (up 1824%)
roshambollah - 4720 (up 511%)
"C. Urbanus" - 1490 (up 224%)

The reports of the death of RPS are, I think, greatly exaggerated.

[Master Roshambollah]

It's almost been a year, and I feel like doing it now, so what the hell...

After each term I will include the number of Google hits and the percentage change from last year at around this time.

usarps - 39300 (up 339%)
wrpss - 2210 (down 98%)
worldrps - 177,000 (down 45%)
roshambollah - 9160 (up 94%)
"C. Urbanus" - 3500 (up 135%)

Make of that what you will.  Of course, there's also the following:

"usarps league" - 3940
"world rps society" - 12,700

And now, a word from our sponsors:

pabst rock paper scissors - 5800
bud light rock paper scissors - 19,900
amp rock paper scissors - 24,300
yahoo rock paper scissors - 202,000

And for completists, the current top 10 Google searches for rock paper scissors.  It may be interesting to view how this changes from year to year:

1 - www.worldrps.com/  the World RPS Society
2 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock-paper-scissors  the Wikipedia entry
3 - http://rpslife.com  the footwear store and cultural mecca in Seattle.  The owner, Boss Chikara, is a close personal friend.
4 - www.rockpaperscissors.com/  an editing company out of Santa Monica, CA
5 - http://rpscollective.com/  an artist collective in Oakland, CA
6 - www.thinkrockpaperscissors.com/  a paper boutique in Charlottesville, VA
7 - www.rockpaperscissors.biz/  world music publicity company
8 - http://books.google.com/books?isbn=0743272625...  Google books entry for "the Official RPS Strategy Guide by Douglas Walker"
9 - www.rockpaperscissor.com  a stationery store in Nashville, TN
10 - www.rockscissorpaper.com/  another stationery store in Los Angeles.

The USARPS League is in the #11 spot.

[Jef Hallestone]

Seeing as we are all throwing useless stats around. Here are some more. The internet movie database now list the RPS Doc and it provides some sort of popularity meter for the 'actors'. What they base these on makes no sense to me. Especially weird that Graham Walker is more popular that Douglas Walker, perhaps it the fact that he seems better dressed and tends to iron his clothes more often