The first half of the 2014 is now behind our backs, and all the big three (Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo) have published their financial and sales reports with  a rather wide range of results, but what about one of the most basic indexes of popularity on the internet? Who gets the most interest on Google and Youtube?

Let's Start with a simple search on Google Trends for the name of the big three home consoles: In the graph below PS4 will be in blue, Xbox One in red and Wii U in Yellow. The category is web searches.

PS4 is clearly in the lead, with an average interest ratio of 78, followed at a distance by Xbox One with 42 and Wii U with 17.

Above we can see the image search category. The trend is pretty much the same but the numbers are a little closer, with PS4 at 71, Xbox One at 41 and Wii U at 18.

News searches are where the first surprises start to show up. Xbox One inches closer, with an interest ratio of 56 against the PS4 at 73, while the Wii U is a distant last at 23. Quite interestingly the Xbox One overtook the PS4 between March 9th and March 15th and May 11th and May 17th. The period between March 9th and March 15th matches the launch of Titanfall, while between May 11th and May 17th Microsoft announced the new Kinect-less SKU for $399.99 and unveiled Halo 5:Guardians.

Google shopping follows similar trends as the charts above, but the Xbox One is doing some catching up to the PS4, with a very brisk upwards turn in July. Averages are 75 for PS4, 56 for Xbox one and 27 for the Wii U.

Quite interesting is the graph for YouTube searches. While the general trend is similar to the rest of the graphs, the Wii U overtook the Xbox One during E3, most probably due to Nintendo's Treehouse programming. The average gap here is the widest between PS4 (75) and Xbox One (32), while the Wii U follows at 19.

If you want to learn more about the method used to draw the charts, you can read a full explanation here.

At the moment it's pretty obvious that the PS4 is dominating the outset of the generation as far as home consoles are concerned, but it's interesting to see that the trends are definitely very similar for all three consoles, even if on different orders of magnitude.

We also get some rather firm evidence that Nintendo's Treehouse concept worked definitely well for Kyoto's console manufacturer, and hopefully it'll become an established format.

On the other hand Microsoft seems to have quite a bit of work to do in order to catch up to Sony, at least for what concerns popularity on the internet. Big news can and did spike them to the top momentarily, but the effect never lives very long.