Since creating Domerama, I never did take much time trying to estimate the popularity of geodesic domes: to me it was obvious, plus Domerama was a personal project. But to be objective I visited Goggle Trends, a search engine of sorts which looks back a few years and forecasts the future trend for interest in a particular topic.
Various search terms were used because as we all have witnessed, changing one keyword can change search results significantly. The terms we used were:
- Geodesic
- Geodesic domes
- Geodesic calculator
- Domes
- Dome Guys (dome manufacturer)
- Pacific Domes (dome manufacturer)
The graphs below show interest from 2004 until December 2012
The trend for interest in geodesic topics is on a downward trajectory except for a visible increase in geodesic calculators (see graphs below for detailed information).
Observations
My first observation was how geodesics in general were losing interest on the web, as the graph for the sole keyword “geodesic” displays. A similar drop can be also be seen for the term “geodesic domes”.
Second, there was a large upswing for “geodesic calculator”, which is contrary to the first observation. Without any scientific method, it seems the actual science of geodesics is less discussed, yet interest in building geodesic domes is on the rise. Though it grows more popular, it remains well below the interest in the term “geodesic”.
Third, I was interested in how 2 major dome manufacturers were faring, and the result is fairly similar for both: interest is flat, even waning. This seemed strange as they both offer colorful and interesting content.
Finally, I wanted to see the areas where most interest originated, and aside from North America, the U.K. is the hotspot in Europe, then Australia, China and the Philippines.
So what can be derived from this?
It seems the geodesic science is not as popular in discussion as building your own geodesic dome. It is true that geodesics had its golden days go by and many of the visionaries have passed with fewer to carry on the work with similar passion.
On the other hand the average person has been increasingly interested in building their own home, greenhouse or storage structures. Possible influences, when looking at the graph for the “geodesic calculator” search term, is how the housing market crash, increased desire for greener living and living off the grid combined to breathe new life for geodesic domes aimed at regular folks. However you look at these graphs, there are interesting conclusions!
On any geodesic dome, find a pentagon (the shape made of 5 struts, identified in yellow in the image above). From the center of this pentagon, find the next pentagon and add up the number of segments (or struts) between the two. In the image above there are 6 struts between each pentagon centers. This makes this geodesic dome a 6v.
