How popular is the Rubik's Cube?

different sized Rubiks CubesThere's no doubt about the popularity of the Rubik's Cube. This simple yet challenging little invention has just celebrated its 40th anniversary and it has already become the World's best-selling puzzle toy. It has a huge speedcubing community, it has been featured in movies and music videos, the World Cube Association organizes competitions to challenge the best cubers worldwide, and the Rubik's Cube has spawned so many other twisty puzzle variations that the possibilities seem to be endless. Obviously there must be only a few people who have never seen or played with it and I think everyone who's not living in the jungle can recognize this small coloured cube.

The Rubik's Cube is popular, there's no question about this, but how popular exactly?

Approximately 350 million pieces have been sold worldwide but this number is just an estimate because so many variations and replicas were produced that it's impossible to track the exact number. Most of these remakes have very bad quality but there are other makes which are even better than the original Rubik's brand cube. The Rubik's brand has its own speed cube, however you are more likely to see a Dayan Zhanchi or a Moyu Aolong v2 on official competitions.

Let's try to measure the popularity with data provided by Google

Google Trends Rubik's Cube popularity

Google Trends provides access to Google search statistics for the last 10 years. It doesn't tell exactly how many searches have been made for a certain term but it does provide relative statistics to the highest point of the chart. The Rubik's Cube makes a perfect gift and it's clearly visible that the chart peaks every year around Christmas. The only considerable peak between the winter holidays was on the 40th anniversary of the puzzle when people had the chance to play with an online Rubik's Cube Google Doodle on the most visited home page of the World. On this specific date we experienced a tenfold increase in our site visitors looking for the solution of the Rubik's Cube and the Ruwix online solver. Google Trends also shows that the biggest regional interest is in the Philippines, Austria, Denmark, New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland and the United States.

Analizing Ruwix visitors

Analizing the visitor statistics of Ruwix since its launch in 2012 we can learn many interesting facts about who is interested in this puzzle. The target audience are not professional speedcubers but regular people looking to learn about the puzzle. The articles are written in English and this fact might also distort some of the statistics. Let's analyze the audience according to Google Analytics:

  • Gender: 70% of our visitors are males and only 30% females.
  • Age: 18-24 years: 42%, 25-34: 25%, 35-44: 19%, 45-54: 7%, 55-64: 3%. Google doesn't count visitors under 18.
  • Language: English: 79%, Spanish: 5%, German: 2%, French: 1.5% Dutch: 1% ...
  • Location: The top 15 cuber countries are listed on the image below. We have even had 3 visitors from North Korea which is a little thrilling.
  • Device: We have more visitors from mobile (45%) than desktop (43%). 31% of the mobile users are using iPhone. The most popular browser is Chrome (45%).
  • The most popular pages are the solution tutorial, the cube timer and the online solver.

Rubik's Cube by gender age language and location

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