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Which Yelp City Has The Most Irish Pride?



As our resident Irishman (born and bred in County Laois) and Director of International Products, Bryan B. feels strongly about many things, not least of all U2*, “St Paddy” vs “St Patty” spellings and Jameson (I mean, he named his dog after it)!

So that got us thinking… With St Patrick’s Day coming up, is there a way for us to quantify which city on Yelp has the most Irish pride?

Irish bryan
We’re engineers, so of course there is! With the help of Bryan and Annie, our Dublin Community Manager, we first identified some of the things people search for the most ahead of St Paddy’s Day. Apparently, this includes:
  • A love of whiskey
  • More importantly, a love of Guinness
  • A love of U2
  • and last but not least, the correct spelling: “St Paddy’s Day”

After that, I got cranking on turning these ideas into usable queries by adding keywords such as Jameson and Bushmills for whiskey and Bulmer’s and Magners for beer. (Again, Bryan helped greatly on this one. Funny that.) Once we knew exactly what we were looking for, I took a dive into our reviews. I used a similar approach to The Most Romantic City on Yelp post: winning cities are ones in which a query appeared in the greatest *proportion* of reviews in a city.  If we had used the greatest absolute number then our biggest Yelp markets like San Francisco or New York City would be on top for every list!

So which cities are getting their jig on come March 17th? The City with the Most Whiskey Lovers would be Chicagoland, Illinois! They took the top honors in the most whiskey-related searches leading up to the big day. The top 5 include:

  1. Chicagoland, Illinois
  2. Oahu, Hawaii
  3. Dublin, Ireland
  4. Corona del Mar, California
  5. Avon, Colorado

Not to be out done, Ireland showed they could not only hold their sauce, but their suds, as well. The City that Loves Guinness the Most unsurprisingly goes to…

  1. Dublin, Ireland
  2. San Diego, California
  3. Belfast, Northern Ireland
  4. Boston, Massachusetts
  5. Berkeley, Oakland and surrounding East Bay cities, California
Who’s doing the most accurate St Patrick’s Day searches? We’re told (again, by Bryan) that the correct spelling of “Paddy” is with a “D”. The version with the “T” being a big no-no. South Boston, Massachusetts demonstrated that their Irish roots remain deep and true with the most searches for “St Paddy’s Day” the week before St Patrick’s Day.

Phew! What with all this tipplin’, we’re feeling a good song coming on  – and so did Yelpers! Based on the number of reviews referencing U2, The 3 Cities That Most Love to Get Stuck in a Moment with Bono…

  1. San Bernardino, California
  2. Dublin, Ireland
  3. Wien, Austria

But we’ve yet to answer the question of which city has the most Irish pride! We feel that the old adage, “Everyone’s Irish on St Paddy’s Day,” holds true, so how about The City that Had the Most Fun on St Patrick’s Day? Why, that would go to Los Angeles, California who performed the most hangover-related searches the day after. Hey, at least now you can be prepared!

To all our yelpers far and wide, Happy St Paddy’s Day — and remember to always enjoy yourself responsibly (we’re looking at you, LA).

*Bono’s investment firm, Elevation Partners, is an investor in Yelp, though this has nothing to do with Jeremy’s love of singing “One” at Karaoke Bars.

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