Curiosity: Borat vs. Kazakhstan

While we're on the subject of Borat, I wanted investigate a small detail the well-know disputed between Borat (Sacha Baron Cohen) and the country ("glorious nation of") Kazakhstan. Perhaps it stemmed from the point in TIME's article that American's don't know that much about Kazakhstan (therefore making revealing our ignorance easier); or maybe it was that point coupled with my friend Evan's venture onto Wikipedia to read more about Kazakhstan yesterday, but something last night gave me a sneaking suspicion that Borat's Glorious Nation wasn't walking away with the shortest end of the stick here: For a country so little known by touristas Americanas, to have Evan and likely many other suddenly curious about the 9th largest country in the world could be more benefit than the harm of Borat's fake association with the country.

Anyway, I have to admit that my one successful attempt to prove this hunch didn't turn out as best it could. I went to Google Trends and searched for "Borat" vs. "Kazakhstan" and got the following graph. Click on it to make it bigger, and you'll see that while Borat's popularity as a search term has skyrocketed in the last few months, Kazakhstan's oddly remained as uninteresting as usual to a Googling world.