I mentioned earlier in one of my blog posts that the interest in Big Data is currently tremendous, while Data Quality is still a rather unpopular discipline. Proof for this statement can be found when analyzing the popularity of the keywords „Big Data“ and „Data Quality“ as search terms in Google. As illustrated in the chart below, „Big Data“ is far more popular than „Data Quality“. But this popularity is rather new, since the overtaking of „Data Quality“ by „Big Data“ just happened in July 2011. Another interesting fact is that with the rise of „Big Data“ the fall of „Business Intelligence“ (in popularity as search keyword) has started.

In short: The popularity of „Data Quality“ marks time and has not caught the „Big Data“ wave, yet.

But the level of popularity for „Data Quality“ is very different among the globe.

As you can see in the above map, searches for „Data Quality“ are not very common in many countries around the globe. Most interest can be found in Kenia, India, Pakistan, South Africa, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zeeland, Ireland and Great Britain. Of course, not everyone is searching for „Data Quality“. Especially non-english countries use their own language and e.g. search for „Datenqualität“, „Qualité de données“, „Qualidade de Dados“, „データ品質“ or „数据质量“. But still if you look at the local statistics for the „Data Quality“ in other languages, the popularity will not be higher:

• Datenqualität (German, ca. 2.900 searches / month)
• Qualité de données (French, ca. 2.400 searches / month)
• Qualidade de Dados (Portuguese, ca. 2.400 searches / month)
• データ品質 (Japanese, ca. 1.000 searches / month)
• 数据质量 (Mandarine, ca. 4.400 searches / month)
• Качество данных (Russian, ca. 2.900 searches / month)
• Calidad de datos (Spanish, ca. 5.400 searches / month)

Very interesting in these statistics is the fact that quality affine countries such as Germany (ca. 2.900 searces / month) or Japan (ca. 1.000 searches / month) only have very limited search interest in data quality compared to the U.S. (ca. 40.500 searches / month) and Great Britain (ca. 9.900 searches / month).

My Summary:

The value of „Data Quality“ for today’s businesses is still underestimated around the globe. However, a lot of people are interested in Big Data. Therefore, it should just be a matter of time until the global interest for data quality rises, since Big Data will most likely also reveal big data quality problems. But to really raise the interest in „Data Quality“ it will require significant marketing efforts similar to Big Data marketing to pull the topic out of the corner.

Do you agree? Please, join the discussion and leave your comment!