Royal Wedding Web Buzz by the Numbers

Prince William and Kate Middleton stand on the steps of City Hall during a visit to Belfast, March 8, 2011 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Indigo/Getty Images

April 29, 2012

Prince William and Kate Middleton may aspire to leave their imprint on history, but they've already left their mark on the Web.

Chatter about the couple -- and the dress, and the guests, and the church, and every other detail related to the big event -- spiked across all corners of the Internet. Experts say that as the festivities get underway, it will likely be one of the biggest "two-screen" events ever.

An estimated 2 billion are expected to watch the royal wedding on television, and they're likely tracking it online too, from a computer or smartphone and with a king's ransom worth of social media services.
"It's that shared experience en masse," said Mark Ghuneim, CEO and founder of digital marketing agency and technology incubator Wiredset and social media tracking service Trendrr. "[The wedding] is one of the more mature situations where production on-air, all parts of the TV conversation, [is] incorporated with social."

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While it's difficult to predict exactly how Web history will remember the so-called "wedding of the century," Ghuneim said, "This event will take place on more devices and more platforms than anything I've seen."
Will the royal couple rule the Web, at least for one day? Below, take a look at the numbers that show the royal wedding's Internet impact thus far.
Royal Wedding Internet Chatter
2.1 million: The number of total tweets about the royal wedding over the past week. (This includes tweets with the Twitter hashtags #royalwedding and #rw2011, and those about the bride and groom, the royal family, notable guests and other relevant topics.)
1.77 million: The number of public Facebook comments to mention the phrase "royal wedding" over the past four weeks in the U.S. (In the U.K., the figure is 1.8 million over the same time period.)
800,000+: The number of views for "Royal Wedding Invitation," the most-viewed official royal wedding video. (The most-viewed unofficial royal wedding video, "T-Mobile Royal Wedding," has 14.2 million views.)
400,000: The number of royal wedding-related eBay auctions this week (up from 7,435 in mid-February), according to Mashable.
11,255: The number of results returned for the search term "royal wedding" on the photo-sharing site Flickr.
5,000: The number of videos uploaded to YouTube tagged "royal wedding" in the last week.
3107: The percentage increase in Yahoo! searches for "Royal Wedding Guest List" over the past week.
1705: The percentage increase in Yahoo! searches for "Kate Middleton Diet" over the past week.
1199: The percentage increase in Yahoo! searches for "What Is Prince Williams Last Name" over the past week.
600-700: The number of tweets per minute posted by Twitter users the day before the wedding. (On Wednesday, that figure was just 200-300 tweets per minute.)
70: The percentage increase in worldwide Google searches for "fascinator" (Kate's hair piece) over the past 30 days.
15: The percentage increase in worldwide Google searches for "sapphire rings" over the past year.
.3: The percentage of news reports about the royal wedding in the U.S., since the couple's November 2010 engagement.
4/25/2012: The week Google searches for "Kate Middleton" surpassed searches for "Lady Gaga" for the first time.