Count rows that match with COUNTIF

COUNTIF takes two things: where to look, and what to look for. =COUNTIF(A2:A11,"North") counts the cells in that range whose contents match.

Text matching ignores capitals, so "north" and "North" are the same to COUNTIF. It does not ignore stray spaces, which is why a column that came out of another system sometimes refuses to match anything, and why TRIM exists.