Why is only 1/25 of the United States interested in Y Combinator?

Doing a little bit of market research this morning for a new project, and out of curiosity, I looked up “Y Combinator” in Google Search Insights.

Almost all searches for “Y Combinator” are from the United States, with a trickle from the U.K. That’s not so surprising, although I was taken aback by the concentrations of national search traffic:

Here’s a map view:

Weird, right?

While it’s not surprising at all that these two states are leaders in interest for Y Combinator, I’m baffled as to why interest in Y Combinator - at least enough to be visible to Google - hasn’t caught on elsewhere.

Perhaps even more strangely, it appears that Wyoming, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Washington are trailing in 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th place, respectively.

That’s every state in the union that starts with a “W”. My math could be a little off, but I believe the chances of this happening by coincidence is about .000005.

Update: aristus writes in the comments: “Not a coincidence. When all of the values are equal, Trends orders the states in reverse alphabetical order. “

Another Update: jack writes, “Your data is out of date”

Actually, my data is more up to date. I’m only looking at 2008 numbers. I am glad you linked to this, because this comparison suggests that the diversity of regions interested in YC has steadily decreased.

This supports the comment from TJIC:

“This is sort of like saying very very few people in Minnesota have agents trying to get them TV deals….that’s because all of those folks MOVED from Minnesota to Hollywood already.”

Disclaimer: I spent the last four years in Chicago, and met some amazing hackers in the Windy City.