The 2012 Olympics have been shattering media coverage records daily. They’ve also been been crushing global search behavior across the world. I think it’s safe to say that technology has come along in exponential bounds in the way people are viewing this year’s games versus the last Olympic games. People are engaging these events across TV’s, computers, smartphones and tablets – often at the same time!

The Google Mobile Ads Blog has crunched some data from the past week, and the opening ceremony is a great illustration of how mobile devices have taken center stage. Fans turned to their smartphones and tablets to find more information about the incredible feats and celebrities that they saw on screen.

The infographic below gives a snapshot of the percentage of total searches that occurred on smartphones and tablets during the first two days of the Games, for Olympics-related searches.

European countries showed especially high mobile search volume with most countries having one-third or more of their Olympics-related searches occurring on a tablet or smartphone. In some European countries this number was substantially higher – in the UK, 46% of Olympics searches happened on mobile.  In Asia, South Korea (36%) and Australia (45%) saw mobile search volume spikes, while Japan (55%) was at the front of the pack.