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Rangers have beaten Celtic to the unofficial title of the world’s “favourite Scottish football club”.
Research reveals the Ibrox club got more search hits on Google than their Old Firm rivals.
Rangers – with 1,088,083 searches on average per month –were top overall.
They received most clicks in Scotland, across the UK and in countries such as The Netherlands, homeland of boss Giovanni van Bronckhorst, and Colombia, home to striker Alfredo Morelos.
Celtic, with 1,019,917 searches a month, were big favourites in Australia, where boss Ange Postecoglou hails from, and in Japan, where the club has sourced stars such as Kyogo Furuhashi, and in Ireland, where the club has historic links.
Data provider Semrush looked at searches for all 42 of Scotland’s senior football clubs in more than 220 places worldwide.
Edinburgh duo Hearts and Hibs shared top billing with the two Glasgow clubs in the South Pacific island of Vanuatu.
Aberdeen was most-searched Scots club in Kazakhstan and also top in Azerbaijan, after the Dons played Baku-based Qarabag in the Europa League.
Aberdeen also have fans in Montserrat, while the British Virgin Islands favour Dundee FC.
Global searches for Rangers climbed by 41.85 per cent compared with 2020 as the club won its first Scottish Premiership title since climbing up through the divisions. Searches for Celtic also leapt by 21.9 per cent.
The most searches for any Scots club came in August 2021, when 1,830,000 people clicked on Celtic, while Rangers peaked at 1.5million the same month.
The top five Scottish clubs globally also included Aberdeen, with 272,750 searches a month (up 38.39 per cent), Hearts, with 167,833 (up 13.72 per cent), and Dundee, with 113,417 (up 91.83 per cent).
Semrush took into account different names clubs might be known as, while all searches had to include the suffix “FC”.
Fife-based Kelty Hearts (5970 searches a month on average) was the fastest-growing in terms of awareness around the world, with an increase of 269 per cent compared with 2020 due to promotion into League Two.
Annan Athletic was Scotland’s least searched, with 2549 searches a month last year.
Olga Andrienko, of Semrush, said: “Celtic may have secured an unprecedented quadruple treble in 2020 but the new research shows that 2021 was Rangers’ year on and off the pitch.
“Rangers not only won the Scottish Premiership to prevent Celtic claiming 10 in a row but they toppled their arch rivals in online search volumes across the globe.”
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