My bet is that all you're seeing is a shift in the specific search terms that people use to research FIRST Robotics.
As evidence, I present the trend with respect to searches about the
general topic of the FIRST Robotics Competition, representing the sum total of all search terms that Google associates with this subject:
https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F096kcy
In
this graph, I find it interesting that the summertime dip in interest has generally gotten deeper over time, whereas the dual build-season and competition-season peaks have gone through a bit of a cyclic trend with 2010 as the worst year and older+newer years doing better.
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EDIT:
And yes, you can definitely see the effect of that university in Switzerland when you look at the national distribution chart!
