BACKGROUND: The lack of standardized nomenclature for atopic dermatitis (AD) creates challenges for scientific communication, patient education, and advocacy.

OBJECTIVE: We sought to determine the relative popularity of the terms eczema, AD, and atopic eczema (AE) using global search engine volumes.

METHODS: A retrospective analysis of average monthly search volumes from 2014 to 2016 of Google, Bing/Yahoo, and Baidu was performed for eczema, AD, and AE in English and 37 other languages. Google Trends was used to determine the relative search popularity of each term from 2006 to 2016 in English and the top foreign languages, German, Turkish, Russian, and Japanese.

RESULTS: Overall, eczema accounted for 1.5 million monthly searches (84%) compared with 247 000 searches for AD (14%) and 44 000 searches for AE (2%). For English language, eczema accounted for 93% of searches compared with 6% for AD and 1% for AE. Search popularity for eczema increased from 2006 to 2016 but remained stable for AD and AE.

CONCLUSIONS: Given the ambiguity of the term eczema, we recommend the universal use of the next most popular term, AD.