Research Objective
The objective of the research was to identify which major cities were affected the most by bed bugs issues within the United Kingdom, from an array of some of Britain’s 20 largest cities.
Methodology
The methodology, in loose terms, was simply to mash city-level population data with search volume data from Google to identify which city had the biggest per capita bed bug issue over the past 12 months. It was decided to measure bed bugs on a per capita basis to get an accurate view of bed bug issues per location so as to avoid population size and influencing the outcome.
Google search volume data is based on the past 12 months of from when the research was undertaken in Jan 2022. The search volume data used was location-specific Google user search demand data for ‘bed bugs’ and ‘bed bug treatment’ keywords coming from each of the 20 cities. The cities we compared in this analysis were:
- Greater London
- Birmingham
- Leeds
- Glasgow
- Sheffield
- Manchester
- Bradford
- Edinburgh
- Liverpool
- Bristol
- Coventry
- Leicester
- Wakefield
- Cardiff
- Belfast
- Nottingham
- Newcastle upon Tyne
- Sunderland
- Plymouth
- Wolverhampton
To reach a per capita figure, we essentially worked out what percentage of the total population was the annual search volume. The higher percentages equate to higher per capita bed bug activity in a given area. Then, by sorting our list of cities in order from highest to lowest percentage, we could determine which cities were the most to the least affected by bed bugs, on a per capita basis over the past 12 months.
Largely the analysis was conducted on the search phrase ‘bed bugs’ because this phrase was the most popular, but we cross reference this with the search term ‘bed bug treatment’, which arguably shows greater intent for a solution to a bed bug problem. The results were conclusively similar for both phrases.
Research Findings
The bed bug capital of the UK was identified as London (including Greater London), with 266,400 Google searches per year. This is the equivalent of 2.97% of the population if each search were to have been conducted by a different person. The reality, of course, is that often, one individual could conduct numerous searches as they research solutions over a time period, perhaps as bed bug problems persist or reoccur to a user over a year, so this is not to say that 2.97% of the population actually searches for ‘bed bugs’ in the past 12 months, but rather that the amount of searches equates to 2.97% of the population.
In second place was Leicester. This result was a big surprise because while London is the UK’s largest city by population, Leicester is far from the UK’s second-largest city, yet it has the second largest per capita bed bug problem with an equivalent of 2.95% of the population searching in Google for ‘bed bugs’ over the past 12 months – very close behind London.
In third place was Manchester. As the UK’s 6th most populated city, it was also interesting to learn that its per capita bed bug problem was significant, with close to an equivalent of 2% of the population searching for ‘bed bugs’ each year in Google.
Bristol and Birmingham were in 4th and 5th place respectively. Birmingham is the UK’s second most populated city, so it’s doing pretty well for itself, sitting in 5th place. Bristol, however, was a bit of a surprise because as Britain’s 10th most populated city, we wouldn’t have expected it to have the 4th biggest bed bug problem.
The UK city with the smallest bed bug problem from the 20 cities was Wakefield, with an equivalent of just 0.46% of its population searching for ‘bed bugs’ annually. The city behind Wakefield with the second lowest per capita searches for ‘bed bugs’ was Cardiff, with an equivalent of just 0.61% of its population searching for ‘bed bugs’ each year.
The full list of all 20 cities in order of worst affected (top) to least affected (bottom) per capita can be found below in the infographic, with those worst affected featured in the map:
Why do bed bug issues don’t closely correlate with city population size?
While bed bugs thrive in highly populated areas, they spread more quickly in places with high footfall because they rely on humans (and their luggage) as their primary means of transport. Bed bug infestations are commonly found in beds and seats on buses, trains, and planes, where they spend their time multiplying and stealthily waiting for humans on whose blood they will feed and in whose luggage they will hitch a ride to their next destination. Once bed bugs reach a new location, they will multiply, laying between 1 – 7 new eggs per day. Bed bugs can wander from room to room looking for humans, and then as those humans mobilise, so do the bed bugs, thus impacting more locations.
Caveats & Considerations
- Google search volume data is provided as a monthly average of the past 12 months. So, to get the annual number of searches, we simply multiplied the monthly average by 12. Another factor with Google search data is it is rounded to the nearest 10 or 100, depending on how big the number is. These caveats mean we weren’t working with exact annual Google search numbers, but we feel they were good enough to give a sufficiently accurate depiction for the purpose of the analysis.
- Population data was somewhat old and came from different years within a 4-year span. Population data was derived from Datacommons.org, which pulls its UK city-level population data from sources such as wikidata.org and Europa.eu. All the population data is dated as coming from the period 2016 – 2019. There is no other reliable UK city-level population data for more recent years available publicly to the best of our knowledge.
- Marrying population data with location-level search volume data is reliant on city boarder definitions being similar between both data sources. We have no absolute way of knowing where the city boarder was drawn when the population data for any city was determined or whether the city borders are the same as what Google recognises as the city boarders. The research was based on the assumption that Google’s definition of a city area would be the same as that from which the city population data was derived, but this may not be the case.
