There might not be a ton of religion finding its way into viral trends -- save the hugely popular "hallelujah flash mob" phenomenon of Christmas 2010 -- but we have noticed something interesting in our daily examinations of rising searches on YouTube: an interest in gospel music.

Though the artists may vary, we've noticed in the past month that a fair amount of gospel performances often appear in among our top spiking searches. In general, searches for "gospel music" now are double right now what they were in early 2008 and have been steadily rising going as far back as our records show.

Weekly services can also affect searches it seems. One artist that we see regularly popping up is Kirk Franklin, whose videos -- as evidenced in the chart below -- see a spike on most Sundays:



Perhaps unsurprisingly, the states showing the strongest regional interest in "gospel music" videos are southern states: Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia respectively. (Country-wise, the nation with the strongest proportional search interest is South Africa interestingly enough, and not the United States.)