I fence and I wouldn't say I care more about international fencing results than maor league sports. Honestly I care much more about the Red Sox and Pats than I care about fencing results.
I'm also quite curious to hear where you're getting this from. The decrease, that is, not the fact that Google doesn't fence, and lots of people don't really know much about it. That's always been true.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure fencing is becoming more popular than it used to be. They've even made commercials with fencing in them recently. You can't trust search engines too much for statistical analysis. My roommate was looking for Vault commercials (cuz they're funny) and he got a lot of results about safes... doesn't mean Vault isn't popular (I don't know if it is...).
"To fight in another man's armour is something more than to be influenced by his style of fighting."
-C.S. Lewis
Are there more fencers simply because there are more people in the US or is the percentage of fencers actually higher? Now that's a deep thought! I would like to know how long/how many years people are active fencers.