Minecraft was the second most searched topic on YouTube in 2014

Frozen may have beaten gaming in the UK’s 2014 entertainment sales war, but it was a different story on YouTube.

Google has revealed that Minecraft was the video giant’s second most searched category behind ‘music’ in the US throughout 2014, beating terms such as ‘movies’, ‘Frozen’, ‘Beyonce’ and even the mighty ‘PewDiePie’.

Games content on the network comes in many forms, it explains, including news, reviews, walkthroughs and guides (‘Let’s Play’) and eSports.

Interestingly, only 37 per cent of those who watch gaming content on YouTube consider themselves to be ‘gamers’, with ‘entertainment’ and ‘humour’ just as likely to be cited as the reason for watching as ‘learning strategies’ or ‘tips’.

Take a broad look at pop culture, and you’ll see that ‘gaming’ is tightly woven into its fabric,” Google’s insights lead for pop culture and gaming Gautam Ramdurai said.

And as gaming content takes off on YouTube, gaming is becoming not only something people do but also something they watch. From an advertiser’s perspective, gaming content is a rare breed — one that delivers engagement and reach. Even if your brand isn’t part of the gaming industry, you can get in on the action.

Gaming content on YouTube is some of the stickiest. More than 20 of the top 100 YouTube channels with the most subscribers worldwide are gaming related. Who’s the most subscribed? That would be Let’s Play creator PewDiePie, with over 32M subscribers. His loyal following now outnumbers the population of Canada. To give you some perspective, Google Trends shows that searches for PewDiePie on YouTube are on par with stars such as Eminem and Katy Perry.”