After winning 26 gold medals, it’s not delusional to believe the US is running away the Rio Olympic Games. At the time of writing, the 554-strong team have collectively won 69 medals, which dwarfs Great Britain and China’s achievements. Still, the medals table doesn’t really take into account other factors, like population, a country’s general affluence or even, uh, overall Google Search rankings.
That’s where Google‘s alternative medals table comes into play.
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Ranking teams by more than just the “look at all my medals” philosophy, the visualisation allows visitors to understand just how big an achievement winning a single medal (gold or bronze) is for some countries.
Taking factors like GDP, population, year-long search traffic and even “heath-conscious and good eating” searches into account, the medals table can change quite a bit.
Spoiler warning: South Africa, with its single gold medal, doesn’t rank highly on the table regardless, but countries like the US still do.
Nevertheless, be sure to have a crack at the table below.
