Research: Swedes show the most interest in air purifiers
Air purifier reviewers HouseFresh have had a look into which countries have been showing the greatest interest in the technology, by tracking their Google searches.
The researchers translated the phrase ‘air purifier’ into 136 different languages and used the Ahrefs Keyword Explorer, to log the average monthly Google search volume in 2023 for every country.
This process was repeated to retrieve 2023 data for each U.S. State.
They then calculated how often air purifiers are searched for per 100k of the population, per month, which is the figure in the infographic below.
Perhaps ironically, given the low levels of ambient air pollution the country enjoys, Sweden were well out in front in terms of Googling purifiers. 168 monthly searches were identified per 100,000 of the population, comfortably ahead of Australia in second (138.7) and double that of Netherlands, who were 8th. The UK’s score was 51.8.
In the US, the states showing the greatest curiosity were Illinois (98.2), Massachusetts (97.0) and New York (95.6).
The researchers also looked at the same data from 2018, to find where there had been the greatest increase in these searches. Globally, Croatia – where the average PM2.5 concentration in 2022 was 4.7 times the WHO’s guideline value – was top, with a 507% increase in air purifier searches.
The considerably less affected New Zealand came in second (462%) with Nigeria third (315%).
Back in the US, New Hampshire, which has recently been affected by Canadian wildfires, has seen a +29.7% jump in the average monthly number of searches for air purifiers in 2023 compared to 2022 (US states were compared year-on-year, rather than over the five year period used for countries).
The report points out that in addition to the wildfires, three in five households in the state use petroleum products as their primary heating fuel, a figure which is a remarkable seven times higher than the national average.
In second for increased searching was Nevada (26.4%), another state afflicted by wildfires in neighboring areas.
