Why NH Owns the Seacoast

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Seacoast New Hampshire
EDITOR AT LARGE

Dictionary.com tells us that the word "seacoast" (say 'sE-"kOst) means "the shore of a sea or ocean". If that’s true, then why does the word inevitably refer to New Hampshire. There are tens of thousands of miles of seacoast in the world – right? But "America’s Smallest Seacoast" (sm) wins the search hands down as the new Google Trends software proves

SEACOAST 'R US

Google has another new software called "Trends" that confirms what we had long suspected. When people use the word "seacoast" they are usually talking about New Hampshire. That is weird, of course. The New Hampshire seacoast is only 18 miles long. The state of Maine advertises a seacoast of 3,500 miles, if you count all the ins and outs of the undulating shore. They should be the seacoast, or California should or Florida. If you count Great Bay, the NH coastline doubles, but that’s not much to shout about length-wise compared to 15,000 miles of American shores. But finally the littlest guy wins.

More than a decade ago when this web site was just a gleam in the editor’s eye, we struggled to come up with a domain name. Okay, it only took about three minutes. We coined the phrase "America’s Smallest Seacoast" (sm) and set to writing about stuff going on here past and present. A decade later, new local stuff goes up every day, and there is no end in sight.

Seacoast searc locations

Now comes further evidence that this region has, through constant repetition, actually "branded" the word seacoast. The new Google Trends lets us see how often users search for a particular word and suggests WHERE they are searching from. Statistics will evolve, but as of today, most of the people searching for the word "seacoast" on Google are already living on the NH coast – in Portsmouth, Exeter, Dover, Durham and Rochester. The rest of the searchers are nearby – Concord and Manchester (NH), Lawrence and Newburyport (MA) and Portland (ME). We are, it seems, searching for ourselves.

Click the "Region" button on Google Trends and we can see that almost everyone in the world searching for the word "seacoast" is doing so from the USA. There are a few searchers from Canada, a dribble from Britain, and that’s it. That is not true if you look at search trends for the word "coast". Those searchers are largely from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, then the United States and Canada. Results are similar for the word "shore", but with New Zealand in the lead. The U.S. takes back the lead, however, in searching for the word "shoreline", which seems to be the dominant word in the state of Washington.

Remember that Google can only spit back what Google knows. This only shows us what people using the Internet are looking for. The more we call ourselves the Seacoast, the more the world perceives us as "THE" official seacoast. In fact, Google has come to define the word in our favor. The Google "web" definition has spread to Wikipedia that tells us – and I quote:

"The Seacoast Region is the southeast area of the U.S. state of New Hampshire. The region stretches 13 miles along the Atlantic Ocean from New Hampshire's border with Salisbury, Massachusetts to the Piscataqua River and New Hampshire's border with Kittery, Maine. The shoreline is generally very rocky and rough in nature, although a few sandy beaches have been created using jetties/groins."

Therefore, "seacoast" equals "Seacoast Region" that equals New Hampshire. The digital circle is complete.

Of course, as with much on Wikipedia, the facts are less than facts, but it just goes to show that the Internet is literally redefining the language. Just as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, those who make it to the top of the search engines, make it to the top of the search engines.

CONTINUE with NH OWNS "SEACOAST"

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