Understanding Google Trends

Google Insights: Wikileaks and Wikipedia

2010-12-15T08:11:00.000-08:00

So Julian Assange's rage-against-the-machine website Wikileaks actually, for one brief shining moment, overtook Wikipedia regarding Google searches. Funny that people Google Wikipedia at all - but it's probably because they don't use a dot-com address. Wikipedia surely must be the most-visited website not to use a .com domain name - or at least the most-visited American site not to.

Anyway, it turns out that Wikileaks is most-sought in Mozambique, Albania, Kenya, Lebanon and Ethiopia - a relatively random list of countries, three of which are in Africa (Uganda and Tanzania are also in the top-ten, leaving an unbroken strip of countriesrunning down the Indian Ocean coast of Africa). The fourth- and seventh-most-searched expression regarding Wikileaks is 'wikileaks en español' (with or without the 'en'), indicating that there are plenty of hispanophones hoping Wikileaks will translate those hundreds of thousands of pages into Spanish for them. Er, who live in Western Africa... Well, in all fairness Cuba is number seven on the list (and that just feels so completely appropriate), though it's the only Spanish-speaking country in the top-ten.

Among countries Googling Wikipedia, though, amazingly eight of the top-ten are Spanish-speaking (Cuba, Mexico, Honduras, Spain, Paraguay, Panama, Colombia, Nicaragua - the only exceptions are Italy and Finland). I have no idea why that is, though I could mention that while all foreign-language Wikipedias are hosted at wikipedia.org, they don't all call themselves 'Wikipedia'. Some call themselves, for example, ውክፔዲያ, Ƿikipǣdia, Vikipediya, વિકિપીડિયા, 維基百科, Viquipèdia, ᐅᐃᑭᐱᑎᐊ, വിക്കിപീഡിയ, Viqùipédie or Wikkipedija.

Google Insights: Santa's Reindeer

2010-12-04T12:00:00.000-08:00

So in honour of the Christmas season... a quick look at Santa's reindeer. The first four, Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen:

No real surprises here, that 'dancer' is most popular by far, followed by 'vixen' (both oddly enough highest-ranked in the Philippines). Or that nobody really ever searches for 'dasher' or 'prancer' (the last one really only shows up in connection with 'Flavor of Love' in some way I don't care to understand) - oddly enough, those two are most popular in the USA, and they do have peaks each December, though you have to take the other two search terms out to recognise that.

The second one, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen:

A bit odd here. I certainly wasn't expecting Comet to tower over the competition, entirely due to the UK, and also seasonal. Turns out "Comet" and "Currys" are electrical retailers in the UK that, I guess, are popular around Christmas? I wasn't surprised that 'blitzen' was most searched-for in Germany. I was surprised, though, that Belgium, France and the Côte D'Ivoire led for 'donner'. I've quite honestly gone my entire life without ever once thinking that the French verb for 'to give' and the seventh reindeer are spelt the same. 'Cupid' is (by a large margin) most searched-for in Myanmar, for some reason. But it's noteworthy that 'cupid' also has a seasonal trend - but not revolving around December. Cupid is most searched-for in February. Which makes sense. Poor Cupid has to work overtime on two different special days. Draw back your bow and let your arrow go.

Google Insights: Ron Paul and Rand Paul

2010-11-27T12:00:00.000-08:00

I decided to look up search trends for the unpleasant Paul family. I know father Ron was a big internet hype back in the day, but I expected to see son Rand eclipsing his father's star as of late. Well, yeah, 'eclipse' inasmuch as holding an aspirin at arm's length can obscure the moon in the sky. Rand is the aspirin, his father the moon. Check it out:

While Ron's map shows searches across the 50 states (with, oddly, Virginia and Vermont doing the worst and Montana doing the best), Rand's is very much contained in his old Kentucky home. Among the most popular search terms, I was disappointed to see that "Rand Paul hairstyle" does not show up. I mean, that's some bitchin' hair...

Google Insights: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday

2010-11-20T12:00:00.000-08:00

Image via Wikipedia

The days of the week. Or rather the weekdays, since Google Insights only allows five search terms.

Now the graph's dynamic, so what I write today will inevitably change. But it's sure to have that cool sawtooth look to it, and I bet it's sure tho have Friday towering over the rest - which makes sense if you think about it. Though as I write this, Friday and Monday have been neck-and-neck till recently, when Friday's taken off like a rocket. For some reason.

People Googling 'Monday' are most often looking for 'Monday Monday' and are, by a large majority, most often Kenyan (Kenyans don't Google the other four days). People Googling 'Tuesday' are most likely American and, suitably, are most often Googling 'Ruby Tuesday'. Wednesday belongs to New Zealand, but there being no song, it's 'On Wednesday' and 'Sheffield Wednesday' that top the list. Australians lead on Thursday, a day with seemingly a lot to do with football. 'Thursday Night' leads the pack. The Americans lead with Friday, Googling 'Black Friday' most, which I guess explains the recent increase in Friday-Googling. Ah, those Americans...

Google Insights: Poor Chile

2010-11-13T12:00:00.000-08:00

Poor, poor Chile. It hasn't been a good year. Or rather it has. I guess. It just depends on what you're looking for.

This isn't the whole world; the whole world includes Chile, and Chileans tend to Google Chile quite often. So it's the United States, where Googling Chile is way more common in Virginia and California than anywhere else. For some reason.

This is just the year 2010. Clearly, people Google Chile only when it's in the news. An earthquake, and some trapped miners. What interests the world (or more technically the USA) about Chile is what's under the ground.

Bungle Jerry

2010-08-21T12:00:00.000-07:00

And... back. After a bit of an unscheduled absence. "Did you miss me when I was gone?" asks a meek Bungle Jerry. "Snort," replies the next-to-non-existent audience. Let me prove it:

This is a graph of how many people, since 2004, have Googled 'bungle', 'jerry' and 'bungle jerry'. The third one is a bit silly, admittedly, since I haven't had this particular 'handle' that long, and like companies worldwide do when they introduce new products to the market, I Googled it first (probably the first person to do so - though it doesn't show up on this chart, sigh) and found nothing unsavoury or, well, at all.

Which is still the case, sadly. No surprise that 'jerry' outranks 'bungle'. People searching for the latter are primarily searching for 'bungle bungle' or 'mr bungle' and, oddly, come from Chile and Australia. 'Jerry' searches are most common in Morocco, Vietnam and Tunisia, members of la Francophonie all (because of Jerry Lewis?), and the top searches and rising searches include 'tom', 'tom jerry', 'tom and jerry', 'tom ve jerry', 'tom y jerry', 'tom si jerry', 'tom e jerry', 'tom et jerry', 'tom jerry games' and 'tom jerry video'. So, well, that prety much explains it.

Face cards: jack, queen, king, ace and joker

2010-07-24T12:00:00.000-07:00

A quickie this time. There are four face cards - Jack, Queen, King, Ace - and the Joker. I have no idea where the names come from, particulary 'jack' and 'ace'. It's all a bit silly, really. What are people Googling? Well, as it turns out:

Five distinct lines, no overlap. King way out front, then Jack, then Queen, then Ace, then Joker. People searching for 'King' are looking for Martin Luther King and Burger King, and the #1 country is, charmingly, Swaziland. People looking for 'Queen' are looking for 'Queen Elizabeth' and 'Dairy Queen', and Canada tops the list - the top five all Commonwealth countries except the USA. Americans look for 'Jack' most: Jack Johnson, Jack Black, Jack Russell, Jack Daniels. 'Ace' is high in Nepal, and it's about 'Ace Hardware' and 'Ace Ventura'.

More with cards:

Surprised by how low diamonds are, and by how much clubs are dropping. Hm.

Springfield, USA and Springfield, Australia

2010-07-17T12:00:00.000-07:00

So I've heard that Matt Groening decided to name the fictitious city where the Simpsons live "Springfield" because there's one in almost every state. Turns out that's quite accurate - and, laughably, there are five Springfields in Wisconsin alone. The map of where in the USA people are Googling "Springfield" looks like this:

Certainly an atypical map. What's going on? Well, here's a list of the top ten states, and the population of the community within their borders called "Springfield":

Missouri (157,630. Metro: 430,900)
Massachusetts (154,082. Metro: 680,014)
Illinois (116,909. Metro: 201,437)
Vermont (9,078)
District of Columbia (None)
Oregon (52,864)
Arkansas (No Wikipedia page, but it exists)
Ohio (65,358. Metro: 140,477)
Connecticut (None, but Sprinfield, MA borders it)
Kentucky (2,634)

Okay, that didn't make a lick of sense, did it? Here's the same thing for Australia:

Queensland (5,732)
New South Wales (3,921)
Northern Territory (None)
ACT (None)
Victoria (There are two, but no population listed for either)
South Australia (541)
Tasmania (There is one, but no population listed)
Western Australia (None)

Okay, that made even less sense. I'll just stop now.

American States: second most popular sport

2010-07-10T12:00:00.000-07:00

So I tried the Google Insights / Inkscape trick again to make another map. I would have liked to make a map showing which sport is most popular (where 'most popular' means 'most Googled' in which state, but that would have been pretty boring: a single-coloured map in which 'football' is most popular in all fifty states. Without exception.

Of course, this being the USA, 'football' refers not to the sport of the World Cup but the one of the Super Bowl. Or at least in theory it does: who can tell what people are actually looking for when they type 'football' into Google's search engine.

Anyway... removing football from the list and replacing it with the other big sports - baseball, basketball, hockey and soccer (yes the other football) - suddenly presents an intriguing map:

It's an odd one. The only one it's easy to say much about is hockey: the sport thrives in northern states, along the Canadian border. None of the states coloured blue here has an NHL franchise, but with the exception of the Green Bay Packers neither do they have a franchise in any of the other main professional team sports. Washington State uniquely prefers soccer, something not easy to explain. You might chalk it up to Washington's large immigrant community, but certainly a good many states here have high immigrant populations.

Now... baseball vs. basketball? It's tough to see what's happening here. The South and the Northeast seem to prefer baseball, but why? And why is the heartland so basketball-happy?

I can only make a stab at an answer. The populous states, containing big cities, seem to prefer baseball: California, Texas, Florida, Illinois, New York. Perhaps states with successful baseball franchises get the interest in baseball, whereas states with no MLB team gravitate to basketball. Why? Well, like American football, basketball is also a college sport, and the NCAA competes for attention with the NBA. Perhaps it's the college level, something baseball doesn't really have, that pushes it ahead.

American States: big cities

2010-07-03T12:00:00.000-07:00

I've done up two maps of the USA, using Inkspace and Google Insights. The first one, this one, was perhaps better in concept than in execution. But oh well. Anyway, what I did was to take five 'regional hub' cities, New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Houston and Los Angeles, and see in each of the 50 states which of the five was Googled most often. I expected to find obvious results in New York State, Illinois, Georgia, Texas and California, but it was the other 45 states I was curious about. The results:

The principle was right: there are 'regions' in the States where people gravitate towards certain big cities - if for no other reason than because they're following the nearest big sports team. So in particular there's a three-state 'zone' (or 'tristate' as they say there) around Houston and around Atlanta. What surprised me was not the fact that New York appears to be the 'default' (among other things, it is of course also the name of a state) but (1) that outside of California itself there is no state where Los Angeles is Googled more often than the others on this list and (2) Chicago has a huge 'zone' of eleven states, extending as far away as Wyoming. Intriguing, and not something I can entirely explain. What has people in Wyoming more interested in Googling Chicago than any other of these cities?

Vuvuzelas

2010-06-19T12:00:00.000-07:00

Always be able to find the South African World Cup in an instant or less... This graph is dynamic, and will change with time. But you'll always be able to find June 2010 on it: just look for that massive spike, when the global soccer championship added a new word to the vocabularies of the people of the world: vuvuzela.

For someone like me who doesn't follow sport, it's the stuff around the football that intrigues me about the World Cup. A vuvuzela is a kind of horn that is popular in South Africa and, without exception, reviled in every other country of the planet. I would have guessed that people were Googling it to discover how to avoid being driven mad by it. But it turns out that what people are interested in includes: "vuvuzela mp3", "youtube vuvuzela", "buy vuvuzela", "vuvuzela acheter", "vuvuzela kaufen". But "vuvuzela ban" is also there, so who knows?

In any case, no surprise that it's South Africa Googling it the most. The rest of the top ten is entirely in Europe, though. Maybe they can hear it from there.

Siamese Twins #2

2010-06-12T12:00:00.000-07:00

More Siamese Twins. You might want to read last week's entry to understand the concept. But here's a handful more two-word phrases that stick together like glue.

Obviously 'hammer' is going to be Googled more often than 'sickle' - now that the USSR is dead, the only time you ever hear 'sickle' is in connection with anaemia. It is the USA where sickle is Googled the most.

Excluding lightning, 'bolts' are only one thing, where 'nuts' are rather more. I doubt that construction equipment is even the prime reason why 'nuts' are Googled, when there's foodstuffs to be had.

And speaking of lightning... it turns out thunder tends to be Googled more often than lightning, and for one stretch there, much more. Interesting that there is a professional NHL team called Lightning, and an NBA team called Thunder (which I'd never heard of before now).

Although 'puff' kills 'huff' everywhere in the world, the difference is (by far) least pronounced in the USA. The legacy of the Huffington Post?

Suppose its the music- and drug-saturated all-night party that puts 'rave' so far ahead of 'rant'? Well, 'rave' is most Googled in the US, where I was expecting a European country. But what do I know?

Siamese Twins #1

2010-06-05T12:00:00.000-07:00

Siamese twins. No, not Chang and Eng. It's a grammatical concept to describe couplets like 'spic and span'. Together, they mean 'clean', but only together. You can't say, "this floor is spic, but I don't think it's span enough." You can't say 'span and spic' either. They're fixed.

So which is Googled more?

In the case of 'spic and span', no surprise, since 'span' is a useful word by itself, and 'spic' is just a racial slur. Except in Macedonia, where it is hugely Googled, and presumably means something else.

Heaven and hell: fascinating, this one, and probably worth its own column. Heaven beats hell, but not by much. And the odd thing is that the gap is narrowing: recently, hell has surpassed heaven. The countries biggest on heaven are the Philippines, the UK and Australia, but people in New Zealand and the Czech Republic Google hell more than heaven.

I'm not sure that 'cranny' means anything at all, separated from 'nook'. And 'nook' isn't the most meaningful word either - at least not till recently. That huge spike is the result of Barnes & Noble launching something I can't be bothered to learn about called 'Nook'.

Now that's a beautiful graph. And I didn't expect to find these two words so closely linked: after all, 'pros' also means 'professionals', and 'cons' also means 'convicts' (and why has no-one ever made a TV show about those two groups of people and called it 'Pros & Cons'?). But they are clearly linked, on a delightfully zigzaggy graph that appears to be diverging ever so slightly.

For reasons that might not be 100% noble, the ladies leave the gentlemen completely in the dust. The nations that have Googled 'ladies' most (Ethiopia leads the pack) haven't Googled 'gentlemen' at all.

With court cases being popular reading material, but the internet being based on infamously buggy computers, I wasn't sure whether 'trial' or 'error' would be Googled more, but in retrospect it's obvious: computer error messages are one of the few truly practical uses for Google. It's in India where those computers screw up most.

Warner Bros. Cartoon Characters

2010-05-29T12:00:00.000-07:00

So of course in the great cartoon wars that exist only in my mind, the Disney stable would square off against the Warner Bros. team, with Hanna Barbera and whoever else mere bystanders. And, of course, Warner Bros. would win, with pluckier and more individual characters, with a sharper sense of humour and of surreal whimsy.

Just as Mickey Mouse is the jewel in the Disney crown, Bugs Bunny is the sun around which the other characters, like so many planets, orbit. So when I decided to look at five Warner Bros. characters, and how much they've been Googled, I went into it expecting Bugs Bunny would be the most Googled. I don't think I realised by how much, though.

That's a huge difference. What intrigues me, though, is where these characters are most Googled. Here's the top five for each:

Bugs Bunny: Turkey, Philippines, Canada, Peru, Greece. A more random list I could not imagine. Apart from Turkey and Greece being neighbours, the countries on this list are nowhere near each other. Perhaps each has a city or a major political personage with this name?
Daffy Duck: the USA, Australia, Turkey, the UK, Canada. A much more explicable list: with the exception of cartoon fan Turkey, this is primarily the Anglosphere, which brings up the question of what these characters are called in other languages.
Porky Pig: United States, Canada, the UK... that's it. Interesting. The Anglosphere, sure, but Porky, the guy who says "that's all, folks" at the end of every Warner Bros. cartoon, doesn't even register on searches outside of these three countries (the rest of the top ten in just countries in alphabetic order).
Elmer Fudd: Canada, the United States, Australia, the UK... that's it. Same as Porky, sadly - except the Australians show up.
Speedy Gonzales: Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, the United States, Canada. And now for something completely different. I don't know whether or not I was surprised to find Mexico absent from the top ten, but the sudden preponderence of European countries threw me for a loop.

Here's a few translations, according to Wikipedia:

English, German, Spanish, French, Bahasa Indonesia, Itlain, Swahili, Dutch, Portuguese, Romanian, Turkish: Bugs Bunny.
Serbian: Duško Dugouško.
Danish: Snurre Snup.
Croatian: Zekoslava Mrkva.
Norwegian: Snurre Sprett.
Polish: Królik Bugs.
Finnish: Väiski Vemmelsääri, or apparently Pelle Pupu.

Regional spelling in Canada

2010-05-22T12:00:00.000-07:00

The English language has, of course, two principal, slightly divergent, 'streams' within it: British English and American English. While the differences are way smaller than sometimes made out, and have nothing on the regional variations that exist in, say, German or Arabic, there are certainly things that make it clear that the two have developed along distinct routes over the past few centuries.

Where does Canada lie here? Well, unsurprisingly, somewhere in between. Canadian accents are meant to be more similar to American accents, and where vocabulary differences exist, Canadians tend to use the American word. However, as enforced in Canadian textbooks and some Canadian newspapers, Canadians are supposed to spell words the way the British do.

But is that true? Let's look at a few examples, with the American in blue and the English in red. These results are for Canada only.

"Flavor" vs. "Flavour"

You can see here that, by a large amount, Canadians Google the American spelling more than the British spelling. While it is true that the first two related searches, "Flavor of Love" and "Flavor Flav" are both correctly spelt without the 'u', there does seem to be a tendency, repeated across every province, to prefer the American spelling.

"Color" vs. "Colour"

While I might have thought that the more famous example of 'color' vs. 'colour' might bring back contrasting results, it does not. If anything, the difference is more profound here, mostly in Alberta and in the Atlantic provinces (perhaps surprisingly). Ontario is the province that Googles the u most frequently, but still less than the five-letter version.

"Center" vs. "Centre"

And yet there are exceptions... Excluding Québec, which generally speaking I will do, as 'centre' is the only acceptable French spelling, nationwide we suddenly see the opposite: the British spelling is preferred in every province (in New Brunswick it's nearly equal). Clearly Canadians cherry-pick their spellings.

"Theater" vs. "Theatre"

The preference for the British form is even more pronounced here, interestingly enough. The -re ending seems to be a Canadian standard, where the -our ending is less of one than generally presumed.

"Realize" vs. "Realise"

Inasmuch as a standard Canadian orthography exists, it's not merely 'copy the British'. The American -ize ending has a lot of poularity throughout the English-speaking world, and is unsurprisingly the only real spelling we'll see in Canada.

"Catalog" vs. "Catalogue"

The tendency to turn -ogue into -og is by no means standard American - the USA is rather divided on that topic. Yet the -og spellings are quite rare outside of the US, so I'm surprised to see that they perform in Canada even half as well as the longer spelling.

"Traveler" vs. "Traveller"

An interesting one here, one that's practically neck-in-neck, and one that I don't imagine many Canadians have even though of. The American spelling prevails in Manitoba, though there are several provinces that Google has no statistics at all about here. Guess Canadians don't Google travellers much.

"Gray" vs. "Grey"

A grain of salt is needed here, I think. Both of these variations are also surnames and geographical names. Still, there's very much a preference for the British spelling here. I was confused about the seasonal spikes until I remembered the CFL, and its cup, the Grey Cup. Searching for "gray" vs. "grey -cup" still shows a two-to-one preference for the e, though

"Yogurt" vs. "Yoghurt" vs. "Yogourt"

One last one. I include this one because ostensibly this word has, in addition to an American and a British spelling, a 'Canadian' spelling, which is identical to one of two French spelling for this cofusing dairy product. Google searching, though, shows this to be largely untrue: the American spelling clearly wins here, with the 'ou' spelling showing up on the charts primarily because of Québec. Outside of there, it's only seen in Ontario and BC.

Vitamins

2010-05-15T12:00:00.000-07:00

Image by incurable_hippie via Flickr

So this came about a week or two ago while discussing Vitamin D online. I mentioned that Vitamin D is a 'star' vitamin these days, getting a lot of press. I suggested that if you could see how much press each vitamin got, you'd find Vitamin D at the top of the pack.

Turns out I was right.

Quick caveats: I don't think there's any such thing as 'Vitamin B'. But all the B12s and B6s and whatever, I figured if I just looked for 'Vitamin B', they'd all get lumped in. I also know there are more vitamins than these. But this, A to E, seemed like a cute way of going about it.

When you actually look at the whole range from 2004 to today, Vitamins C and D are equal for number of searches. However, it's the trends that matter. Vitamin C has had a slow downward trend over the years, while Vitamin D is indeed shooting for the skies ahead of the competition. And, oddly, Vitamin E had a huge spike in November 2004.

Some random additions: Jamaica leads the pack for searches on both Vitamins A and B, but it's Trinidad and Tobago leading for Vitamins C and E. All-star D finds the Americans on top.

And for fans of cereal boxes, here's another chart for you:

Niacin FTW. The Americans lead the pack in three of these, with India topping the list for pantothenate.

Whatever that is.

Billboard #1 Singles

2010-05-08T12:00:00.001-07:00

The most recent #1 singles on Billboard's Hot 100 chart are:

"OMG" by Usher
"Nothin' on You" by B.o.B.
"Rude Boy" by Rihanna
"Break Your Heart" by Taio Cruz
"Imma Be" by the Black Eyed Peas

What got me thinking about this, though, was none of those groups at all but Lady Antebellum, a band who seems to be doing well for themselves with distinctly regional, as opposed to national, support. I got to wondering if these acts also had regional success, as opposed to nation-wide. Since B.o.B and Taio Cruz are one-hit wonders, I used only their names for the search function. For the other three (rather more popular), I included the song title too.

It`s a pretty chart, with lots of criss-crossing. But let`s look at the goods. I'm listing the top ten states for each of these songs, coloured according to their region in the United States. Here's my colour scheme:

West
Midwest
Northeast
South

The regional definitions come from the US Census Service, by the way. So here we go:

"OMG Usher": Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, California, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Maryland, Massachusetts, Illinois, Indiana
"B.o.B.": Michigan, Connecticut, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Massachusetts, Maryland, Wisconsin, New York, D.C.
"Rude Boy Rihanna": South Carolina, Louisiana, New York, Maryland, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Alabama, North Carolina, Florida
"Taio Cruz": Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, D.C., Arizona
"Imma Be Black Eyed Peas": Tennessee, Michigan, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, Illinois, New York

Some interesting trends here - noteworthy that the western half of the country contributes essentially nothing - of particular surprise is that California shows up only once here. There is a fair amount of regionalism here: though Usher has states from all four regions (if Maryland is really a southern state), fully half of the states are Northeastern (even though he's Texan). B.o.B. of Atlanta, Georgia has support from throughout the eastern half of the country: four northeastern states, three midwestern, and three by the Census Bureau's dodgy definition of 'southern', including his home state. Barbadian Rihanna, interestingly, finds her support primarily in the South - seven in ten, the remainder being northeastern. English Taio Cruz technically has support from all four regions (inasmuch as D.C. is southern), but half the states are northeastern. Half of the Black Eyed Peas' states are southern, with three midwestern and two northeastern. Even though they themselves are Californian.

OMG, WTF, LOL, BRB, FTW

2010-05-01T12:00:00.000-07:00

Ah, the internet... the things you've changed.

I was inspired to do this entry based on an article I'd read in the newspaper, oh, a year ago. You know how some old scrap of forgotten info just suddenly, and randlomly, flutters back into your head? Something like that. It was about a person being given a licence plate that said 'WTF'. You know: WTF-528 or something. The kids giggled, the mom didn't know why. In truth, why not? I'm sure all five of these three-letter acronyms grace licence plates. Before the internet, they meant nothing at all.

The graph shows little: LOL beats all of the others, they're all steadily rising, near each other except for runaway winner LOL, and LOL and OMG are in the middle of current, very new spikes (well, Insights guesses it's a spike, but maybe it's just a massive, permanent upsurge in their fortunes).

Random info from the five:

OMG is searched most often in the Philippines and Jamaica. The most popular search item is "OMG Yahoo", which is a cheesy fake TMZ. Incidentally, omg.com is just a reroute to omg.yahoo.com.
WTF is most popular in Canada, and among other things, a popular search item is 'wtf taekwondo', where I presume WTF means 'World Taekwondo Federation'. There is a site at wtf.com, which describes itself as 'an online community forum with a focus on ranting and debating for those who want to bitch and moan about anything on their mind.'
The top two countries searching for LOL are, oddly, Bosnia and France. Perhaps it has a second meaning in Bosnia? Anyway, unsurprisingly 'lol cats' is the most searched term. Again unsurprisingly, lol.com is a humour site.
BRB is far and away most popular in Brazil, and the top search items are filled with banking terminology. So BRB is clearly some Brazilian bank - where one hopes the tellers stay at their terminals. But brb.com is the website for Butler Rogers Baskett Architects.
FTW means 'for the win'. Top googling countries Norway and Singapore might know that, but they might not. Amongst the top ten most searched phrases are: 'what does ftw', 'ftw mean', 'ftw meaning', 'ftw means', 'what is ftw', 'ftw stand for' and 'ftw mean?' Poor confused internet. Lastly, ftw.com is an 'under construction' site for Fort Worth.

David Cameron, Gordon Brown, Nick Clegg

2010-04-24T12:00:00.001-07:00

I have so little to say about this graph. As the cliché goes, it speaks for itself. Nick Clegg's rise in approval is mirrored by a rise in Google searches - makes sense, since he's the 'dark horse' here, coming from behind. But it's easy to understand his appeal now, based on how much rust has collected on the Labour and Conservative brands. Sometimes shiny and new is attractive.

This is a dynamic chart that changes over time. And as I'm writing this several days before it posts, even I don't know what it'll look like when it publishes. Will Clegg still be sky high? Or will it be a temporary spike?

Oh, and how cool is it that the three colours Google Insight chooses for its first three earch items complements the political scene in the UK so well?

FOX News, CNN, MSNBC

2010-04-17T12:00:00.000-07:00

It would appear that in the USA, among the other millions of things that oughtn't to be political but for some reason are... we have news channels. You often hear rhetoric that FOX News has a conservative bent, but you less often hear the claim that MSNBC has a liberal bent. Or that CNN is allegedly somewhere in the middle.

Well, it is certainly true that CNN is way more popular than the other two. But let's check which states Google them the most, and let's compare that to voting trends from the last election.

FOX NEWS:

Alabama: McCain 61%, Obama 39%
Missouri: McCain 50%, Obama 49%
Georgia: McCain 52%, Obama 47%
Texas: McCain 55%, Obama 44%
Mississippi: McCain 56%, Obama 43%
Tennessee: McCain 57%, Obama 42%
Ohio: Obama 52%, McCain 47%
North Carolina: Obama 50%, McCain 49%
South Carolina: McCain 54%, Obama 45%
Arkansas: McCain 59%, Obama 39%

MSNBC:

Maine: Obama 58%, McCain 40%
Rhode Island: Obama 63%, McCain 35%
New Mexico: Obama 57%, McCain 42%
District of Columbia: Obama 93%, McCain 7%
Pennsylvania: Obama 55%, McCain 44%
New York: Obama 63%, McCain 36%
Maryland: Obama 62%, McCain 37%
Alaska: McCain 60%, Obama 38%
Ohio: Obama 52%, McCain 47%
Missouri: McCain 50%, Obama 49%

CNN:

Georgia: McCain 52%, Obama 47%
District of Columbia: Obama 93%, McCain 7%
New York: Obama 63%, McCain 36%
North Carolina: Obama 50%, McCain 49%
Maryland: Obama 62%, McCain 37%
Texas: McCain 55%, Obama 44%
Florida: Obama 51%, McCain 48%
Minnesota: Obama 54%, McCain 44%
Illinois: Obama 62%, McCain 37%
Ohio: Obama 52%, McCain 47%

Well, those are pretty conclusive results. 8 of the top ten FOX News Googling (not watching) states are 'red states', 8 of the top ten MSNBC Googlers are 'blue states'. Interesting that 8 of the 10 are 'blue' for CNN too - note that #1, Georgia, is red, but note also that CNN is centred in Georgia. CNN Googlers are very much concentrated on the Atlantic Coast, and the vast majority of them are on the top ten of one of the other networks too. Ohio, the newshounds, are on the top ten of all three.

Google Insights: death spikes

2010-03-27T12:00:00.000-07:00

It's a sad reality that people are interested in celebrities dying. So much so, in fact, that the news of a celebrity's death causes a momentary surge of interest in that celebrity. In the case of Michael Jackson, that was enough to more or less swamp the whole internet. You can pick out exactly when these celebrities died by looking at worldwide searches for them from 2004 to present:

All deaths are not equal, however. Obviously Michael Jackson's death is something unprecedented in the history of the internet, but beyond that:

It turns out that, while Michael Jackson dwarfs everyone else so much that events before his death still trump other people's deaths. The aftershock of his death was still greater than the news of Patrick Swayze's death. Corey Haim's is too new to compare, but Heath Ledger's was a pretty high spike. George Carlin's was surprisingly low. Google Insights wouldn't let me compare Farrah Fawcett to other people, for some reason...

Google Insights: burger joints

2010-03-20T12:00:00.000-07:00

Cheap and easy this time... hamburger restaurants around the world. No surprise McDonald's kicks the competition... odd that their searches are seasonal, though. I can't really guess why. Anyway, McDonald's seems to have a connection with the English language, since the top five is Australia, the USA, Singapore, New Zealand and Canada. Burger King is a bit more multilingual: the USA, Puerto Rico, Turkey, Germany and New Zealand. Similar names show up for Wendy's: the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Panama.

Don't the Kiwis love their hamburgers?

Google Insights: blue states and red states

2010-03-13T12:00:00.000-08:00

Someone somewhere, about a decade or so ago, got the idea to use the colours blue for the Democratic Party and red for the Republican Party (the opposite of conventional wisdom). Someone else got the idea, during election coverage, to use this colour scheme to colour states on maps. Someone else got the idea to refer to the states coloured red as 'red states' and those coloured blue as... well, perhaps you've guessed. As a result, Massachusetts (senatorial elections notwithstanding) is a so-called 'blue state' and Alabama a so-called 'red state'.

So how red and blue are they really? Well, I searched for those terms: 'blue state' and 'red state' to see who was Googling them. Confusion reigns:

The two maps aren't really all that different from each other (which actually makes sense). Maine and Massachusetts Google 'red states' the most, which could be interpreted as espionage, whereas West Virginia and DC Google 'blue states' most. In this case, it's a bit more curious: West Virginia (#3 for 'red states' as well) seems to take its status as a transitional state seriously, Googling both sides. DC, on the other hand, is as blue as they come - even if it's not a state per se.

Here's the trends over time. Notice, logically, how similar the two are. When people are Googling one, they're Googling the other.

Google Insights: social networking sites

2010-03-06T12:00:00.000-08:00

Something I wrote last week made me want to consider this topic. Social networking sites are meant to be one of those defining factors of what they were recently calling "Web 2.0" - the more dynamic, interactive, user-controlled web that now exists. By and large I have little interest in social networking sites, but the graph is interesting. Well, to a point:

The ubiquity of Facebook obviously renders this graph a bit useless. I'm surprised, though, that Facebook keeps rising. I would have figured by now that whoever was going to use it already would have, and that many people would have gotten bored of it by now: in short, that it would have begin to resemble that wonderful bow-shaped rise-and-fall that we see for Myspace.

So what's interesting, then, is how regional these sites are. The real action is in the 'regional interest' lists. Myspace, it turns out, is most popular in Puerto Rico, the USA, Australia, Malaysia and the UK - anglophone countries or countries influenced by anglophone countries. Oddly enough, Facebook's global reach has succeeded to the point where its hometown of the USA isn't even in the top ten anymore and only one English-speaking country, the UK, makes the top ten at all. Tunisia, bizarrely, is at #1, followed by Turkey, Italy, Croatia and Venezuela: a motley crew of countries if I've ever seen one.

Google's Orkut is meant to be 'popular in Brazil and India', but Brazil's neighbout Paraguay actually tops the list, with Brazil, India, Pakistan and Haiti rounding out the list. Facebook appears to be all but unheard of in Brazil, though Twitter is popular enough there to give Brazil its #1 ranking, ahead of an otherwise anglophonic top five: Ireland, the UK, the USA, Canada. Hi5, about which I know nothing, seems to be a Spanish-speaking phenomenon, with eight of the top ten being hispanophonic countries. Spain is not one of them, though its neighbout Portugal, unique in Europe, seems to enjoy hi5. The hi5 top5 is Peru, Portugal, Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Costa Rica.

Google Insights: the USA, year by year

2010-02-27T12:00:00.000-08:00

So it turns out that if you don't put any terms at all in the search box on Google Insights, you can still get insightful info. It can tell you the most searched items under certain circumstances, like at a certain point in time, in a certain area, or of a certain category. I'd love to go year by year and see what the whole world was searching for in 2004, 2005, 2006 and so on, but it won't let me. So I'll choose that entity that often confuses itself with 'the whole world', the USA.

Back in 2004, it turns out that Americans used Google exactly as Google would hope: using keywords to find things that interest them. Thus, #1 on the list is 'lyrics', and cute little generic words like 'music', 'map', 'news' and 'games' pepper the top ten. Only two 'brand names', 'yahoo' and 'ebay' make the list. Rather charmingly, 'love' comes in at #10. Ah, the innocent youth of the internet. (The 'rising searches' section is more interesting, really, as it contains 'janet jackson', 'usher' and 'john kerry' alongside words such as 'blog', 'ipod' and 'athens 2004'.)

By 2005, not much has changed, really. 'Google' joins 'yahoo' and 'ebay' in the corporate-name category, 'love' has sadly been lost, and 'lyrics' still tops the list. (The 'rising searches' have lost a lot of quirkiness. 'Myspace' tops the list, 'cingular' and 'bank of america' are on it, and cutely so is 'failure'.)

Come 2006, 'myspace' has flown all the way to the #2 spot, and oddly 'my' comes in at #4. A tribute to changing technology, 'video' now ties with 'music', though 'lyrics' is still the proud #1. (The 'rising searches' confirms this, with 'youtube' at #1 and 'you tube' at #2, four of the top ten referring to Myspace and two of them referring to Wikipedia.)

Not much has changed by 2007. 'Lyrics' is still #1 and 'myspace' still #2, with 'my' now below 'you', bizarrely. I suppose it has something to do with Youtube, but 'youtube' itself is not on the list. Apart from that, there's still 'games', 'music', 'weather' and 'map'. People still know how to use Google. (By a huse margin, 'webkinz' leads the 'rising searches', which I find terribly cute. For reasons I cannot fathom '300' comes in at #9.)

Things are really settling in by 2008 (making me think this was a rather boring topic to consider): 'lyrics' at #1, 'myspace' at #2 (was it still so popular as late at 2008?) and 'you', 'my', 'yahoo', 'google', 'games', 'weather' and 'news' on the list. The only real thing to note is that 'youtube' is now properly on the list. 'Music' has fallen off, and it makes me wonder about the veracity of this information. After all, shouldn't 'mp3' rank higher than these items? Or, for example, 'sex'? Are these the words a squeaky-clean Google wishes were most-searched-for? ('Obama' tops the rising searches, with 'facebook' and 'craigslist' in evidence, and 'free movies' suggestive of just a tiny little bit of illicit behaviour.)

2009, and a king is dethroned. 'Facebook' was, according to Google Insights, searched for more often than 'lyrics', which for me raises a question: why do so many people Google Facebook? Certainly it's not that taxing to remember that Facebook is 'www.facebook.com', is it? Do these people Google Facebook every time they log onto it? By 2009, the top ten list includes 'facebook', 'youtube', 'yahoo', 'google', 'myspace' and 'craigslist': six of the top ten, and if these stats are to be believed, people no longer use Google to search for things as to link them to certain sites their too lazy to remember the urls for. Come to think of it, most mystifying of all is why people are Googling 'google'. I mean, you're alread there. What are you looking for? ('Twitter' is the number one rising search, with 'michael jackson' at #2. Four of the remainder reference Facebook, and 'juegos' comes in at #7.)

Google Insights: two-letter combinations, part two

2010-01-16T12:00:00.000-08:00

Okay, the answers. Last week, I decided to test myself to see which two-letter combinations I predicted would have been Googled most often. Here are the results:

Set #1: 'au' 86, 'aa' 39, 'ao' 19, 'ai' 16, 'ae' 5. I bet au, aa, ai, ae, ao. So not bad all told. I just underestimated 'ao'. I don't know why people search for 'ao' as often as they do.

Set #2: 'be' 78, 'ba' 11, 'bo' 9, 'bi' 7, 'bu' 5. Similarly, it's not that bad except that I underestimated 'ba'. British Airways, I suppose?

Set #3: 'ca' 78, 'co' 50, 'ce' and 'cu' tied at 13, 'ci' 4. I bet co, ca, ce, cu, ci, which just mixes positions one and two. I forgot about my own country, Canada.

Set #4 is as follows: 'de' at 81 well above everything else, 'do' 13, 'da' at 6 and 'di' and 'du' tied at five. My answer of 'de', 'di', 'do', 'da', 'du' errs by, for some reason, way overestimating 'di'. Too much credit to fans of ex-royalty, I guess. I did say it was the most difficult, though.

Set #5: 'eu' 65, 'ea' 22, 'ei' 9, 'ee' 7, 'eo' 5. This time, like before, I was off by drastically overestimating one of them: 'ee'. I'm not sure why, really. Did I think the world was filled with Estonians?

Google Insights: two-letter combinations, part one

2010-01-09T12:00:00.000-08:00

Okay, so this week I'm going to use Google Insights to test my ability to predict. The game is this: I'm going to take five series of five two-letter combinations, as follows. Set #1 will be 'aa', 'ae', 'ai', 'ao' and 'au'. Set #2 will be 'ba', 'be', 'bi', 'bo' and 'bu'. Set #3 will be the letter 'c' + each of the five vowels, sets #4 and 5 will be 'd' and 'e' plus the vowels.

The questions is: which of each will have been googled the most? Not in any particular year or country – just over all. This week I'll post my predictions, and next week the actual ones. Feel free to make your own predictions, though it's easy enough to cheat, of course.

These are my predictions: for set #1, 'au' will have been searched most, then 'aa', then 'ai', 'ae' and 'ao'. For set #2, I say 'be', 'bo', 'bi', 'ba' and 'bu'. For set #3, 'co', 'ca', 'ce', 'cu' and 'ci'. For set #4, 'de', 'di', 'do', 'da' and 'du' (that one is particularly difficult). For set #5, I say 'eu', 'ee', 'ea', 'ei' and 'eo'.

In a week, let's see how well I do. Is there a point to any of this? None whatsoever. But there you have it.

Google Insights: Mayan calendar

2010-01-02T12:00:00.000-08:00

This is the graph generated when you look up who has been looking up the phrase 'mayan calendar' over the years. For me, the important thing is that the search records go back to the year 2004. All of six long years ago...

I'm a bit of a cynical person. The thing is that it bothers me how eager people are to adopt end-of-the-world scenarios. The reasons why I didn't include the year 2012 in this search are (a) it is a year, and not everyone googling it is necessarily googling end-of-the-world scenarios, and (b) it's a movie too. A movie about the silly quasi-prophecy, sure, but moviegoers can't be blamed for having a mere interest in the tired disaster-movie genre (I saw the movie 2012. I didn't understand a word of it). So I chose the phrase 'Mayan calendar', which no one would ever google except as regards the so-called ancient prophecy that didn't seem to exist until a year or two ago. A search confirms it: that's a real j-curve rise from precisely zero. Clearly just a few years back, no one had ever heard of this silly nonsense. And I can predict, looking into the future, that this curve will continue to grow until 2012 itself before fading away when the world fails to conform to Mayan predictions and end.

People intrigued by all this nonsense include: Indians, Filipinos, Americans and Canadians. Nobody in Central or South America. Hm.

Google Insights: 2010

2009-12-26T12:00:00.000-08:00

Now there's a classic j-curve for the new year. Obviously, the amount that people have been Googling 2010 has drastically increased recently as we've, well, approached 2010. The pretty graph you get if you factor in other years besides looks like this:

2010 ain't seen nothing yet, searchwise. On this chart, I love how each year shows a little bit more searches and how each year has peaks and valleys unique to it. Like fingerprints.

Back to the year in question, some random stats:

The country googling 2010 with the greatest frequency: Eritrea.
The rest of the top five: Togo, Ethiopia, Cameroon, South Africa, all in Africa.
American state googling it most (per capita): Virginia (by a long shot).
Canadian subnational entity: Northwest Territories.
German land: Hessen (by a long shot).
In China: Beijing.
Most searched 2010-related phrase: "pes 2010" (whatever that means).
Primary search categories in which '2010' features: Sports, Society, Automotive, Entertainment, Local and Computers and Electronics.

Google Insights: Santa Claus

2009-12-19T12:00:00.000-08:00

The man of many names, the man in the Coca-Cola red suit... he who brings gifts down the chimney; that's right, it's the effeminately-named Santa Claus! Or, before the distortion, St. Nicholas. Or Father Christmas. Or Kris Kringle. Or...

There are definitely historical reasons why the big guy parades around with so many different names. At 12 to 1 to 1 to 0 respectively, on the worldwide count "Santa Claus" definitely wins as most-searched, as this chart shows:

No surprises that people search for Santa more in December than, say, April, right?

Anyway, let's see what that domination looks like from country to country. As global internet-leader, it's no surprise that the American search trends resemble the global ones, at 13 to 2 to 0 to 0. Note that "Father Christmas" and "Kris Kringle" are all but unknown in the States.

What about across the pond in the UK? Well, definitely a different story there. Santa Claus still leads the pack, but it's 11 to 1 to 10 to 0, so Father Christmas is an alias almost as popular.

Australia? At 14 to 0 to 2 to 3, Santa wins but Kris Kringle gets an unexpected second-place ranking. Neighbour New Zealand does not share Kringlophilia, though: 11 to 0 to 2 to 0.

Canada takes Santaphilia to new heights, at 16 to 1 to 0 to 0, although being bilingual, if we add 'Pere Noel' to the list, it gets a count of 7 (by the way, I'm tossing these numbers around, but I'm not quite sure what, if anything, they represent).

Other English-speaking countries? Ireland: 10 to 0 to 1 to 0. Jamaica: 4 to 0 to 0 to 0. Nigeria: 5 to 0 to 0 to 0. South Africa: 9 to 0 to 11 to 0 (the first time Santa Claus doesn't top the list. I tried adding an Afrikaner term, but "Kersvader", "Kerstman" and "Sinterklaas" didn't get me far).

Google Insights: the Simpsons

2009-12-12T12:00:00.000-08:00

The TV family "The Simpsons" has five members, in order of age Homer, Marge, Lisa, Bart and Maggie. If you look up Google stats connected to these five names, this is what you get:

Unsurprisingly, Homer and Bart are the most searched. It is a strange phenomenon that cartoons are very male-dominated: cartoon 'stars' are inevitably male, and what female characters exist tend to do so only in relation to the male leads: as girlfriends or family members. The Simpsons is 'about' Homer and Bart in a way it's not 'about' the other three, even if they occasionally have episodes devoted to them.

Comically, the recent Playboy featuring Marge has created a mammoth spike. Meaning that what intrigues people the most is naked cartoons. Ah, the male psyche, how I love thee.

Some other insights... Aussies lead the world in searches for every Simpson family member except Bart. Aussies come in at only #5 for Bart, while Uruguay leads the pack. Uruguay features no internet searches at all for the other four Simpsons. Hm.

Google Insights: potato

2009-12-05T12:00:00.000-08:00

This time a blog dedicated merely to a certain word and to what we can dig up associated with it. The humble potato.

It's a nicely seasonal graph to be sure, with potato searching peaking in autumn. The overall country stats rather bizarrely feature Thailand foremost among potato googlers (where the fact that 'potato mp3' is a popular search m akes me think we're not talking tubers) before the English-speaking world features (#2 USA, #3 Australia, #4 Canada, #5 Zimbabwe...). Subnationally, there are no surprises that in the USA Idaho leads in potato searching and in Canada PEI leads. The Americans search most often for 'sweet potato', though 'baked potato', 'potato salad' and 'potato soup' rank ('potato chips' encouragingly comes in only at #10). In Britain, 'potato recipe' beats 'sweet potato' as the most popular search term, while intriguingly 'leek potato soup' comes in at #6 and, most intriguingly, 'jacket potato' and 'baked potato' are practically tied at #7 and #8 respectively ('jacket potato' is the British terminology for what Americans call 'baked potato'). Dan Quayle would be pleased to know that 'potatoe' (sic.) is the 9th most common potato-related search in the UK.

This blog mentions http://www.blogsurfer.us/ in it.

Google Insights: baby names

2009-11-26T12:00:00.000-08:00

Okay, a quick and easy one this time. The Social Security Administration releases a list of the most popular names for new babies every year in the States. It's also a fascinating source of trends, how names fall into, and out of, fashion over the years.

So there are two graphs here: one showing the five top boys' names on 2008 and the other, well aren't you clever if you guessed it.

The boys who in a few years will find the constant need in school to use their surnames are: Jacob, Michael, Ethan, Joshua, Daniel. With the exception of Ethan, a very staid and Biblical list. Who googles what?

Well, isn't that useless? Obviously one rather significant celebrity death has completely thrown things awry here - though interesting to note that "Michael" was galloping ahead of the pack well before Mr. Jackson's death anyway, and Daniel outpaced the other three. Hm.

Looking internationally, the Danish love Jacob, Michael is widespread among English-speaking countries, Ethan seems to be an entirely American thing, Joshua tops lists in Africa, and Daniel seems to be popular throughout the Americas (both North and South).

The girls, a rather more eclectic, fashion-conscious and secular list: Emma, Isabella, Emily, Madison, Ava.

More intersting results: consistent different levels of interest, with spikes all over the place. I guess Madison tops the list due to non-girl's-name things, like the city in Wisconsin for example. I don't know if I've ever met a girl named Madison, actually. Emma has huge spikes, which may or may not have anything to do with Harry Potter movies (were there similar spikes for Daniel?)

It's the Swedes who love Emma most, the Danish who go for Isabella (which I always took to be a Spanish name), Americans go for Emily most, and the Belgians are all over Ava (I prefer the spelling 'Eva' myself). Madison, of course, is a big green Lower 48, as whatever uses the name has, they're all American phenomena.

Google Insights: pop, soda, coke

2009-11-19T12:22:00.000-08:00

It's a strange little quirk of geography and linguistics that 'soft drinks', generically, go by three different names in the United States (more than that, really). 'Soda', which in other countries generally describes something different, 'pop', which has a million other meanings including a genre of music, and 'coke', which of course is actually the brand name of a particular drink. Don't get confused: I think in much of the world, or at least much of the States, 'coke' is used generically to mean any cola (i.e. Pepsi as well) - but what I mean here is people who would refer, for example, to Sprite or root beer as a 'coke'.

Well, here are the maps in all their splendour. I should mention that I actually looked for 'pop can', 'soda can' and 'coke can', mainly to try to get references to pop music weeded out.

This is the map for 'pop', which by the way in Canada is the most common word for it. You can see the dark blue is up north, but hardly country-wide. It's not exactly 'the northwest' either, for it goes dim when you get to the Atlantic coast as well (Vermont, on the Canadian border, is one of the palest in the country). So geographically, what is this area? The Midwest, I suppose, more or less. Hm.

This one is a bit confusing. Theoretically, 'soda' (seemingly by far the most popular) is bicoastal: you should see usage in the Northeast and in the entire West. While that is to an extent true, a few anomalies show up here: first, California ranks low. Second, Wisconsin (Midwest as they get) ranks high. Third, so does Florida, which is confusing in consideration of the third one:

Here's 'coke', a Southern map if there ever was one (though it spikes all the way up to Lake Michigan). I had figured this map would be less defined, since the flagship brand of the Coca-Cola Corporation is rather popular nationwide, but this map does exactly what it promises. Interesting to go back to my earlier entry on religions and compare 'coke' to 'Baptist', 'pop' to 'Lutheran'.

And I dare anyone to find meaning in that...

Google Insights: top-selling artists of 2003

2009-11-12T12:00:00.000-08:00

I did this search to check on longevity in the music business. Google Insights goes back to January 2004, a time at which these artists would have been, presumably, been popular searches, as they are the artists responsible for the best-selling CDs of 2003 (one reason I chose 2003 instead of 2004 is that it's a more interesting list).

To see the stats themselves, the top five selling CDs in the USA in 2003 are:

1.  Get Rich or Die Tryin' / 50 Cent              6,535,809
2.  Come Away with Me / Norah Jones               5,137,468
3.  Meteora / Linkin Park                         3,478,361
4.  Fallen / Evanescence                          3,364,738
5.  Speakerboxx-Love / Outkast                    3,089,849

Ooh! Courier New! How very sexy... so sexy that I'm not going to correct the errors regarding the name of Outkast's album.

Anyway, so that's our starting point. Looking at this graph, we can see that Norah Jones was never as popular on Google as she was on CD players (logical when you consider that her main demographics include people who probably use the internet less often), Outkast had a surprising lack of steam (in 2003 it was as if they were the 'future of music'), and 50 Cent had an amazing 2005. There is, however, a general downward trend here - indicating that all stars do fade, sooner or later.

A bit of random stats: 50 Cent is most popular in Eritrea, Norah Jones in Madagascar (by far), Linkin Park in Nepal, Evanescence in Bolivia and, unique among the five, Outkast is most popular in the USA. Talk about globalisation. Or rather, talk about the domination of the American music industry worldwide...

Google Insights: DDR, BRD

2009-11-05T12:00:00.000-08:00

So when I was a kid, I used to collect stamps. I think my reason for doing so was that 'a kid needs to collect something or other'. Anyway, some of the nicest looking stamps came from "DDR", which, it turns out, was East Germany

So anyway while looking at the sub-national maps on Google Insights (not every country gets one), I was wondering what search terms to look for that would bring out geographical distinctions in other countries (like I've done in the States a few times). Not knowing that much about Germany, I went back to my stamp-collecting days and tried "DDR". Bingo... there's that Iron Curtain, as if it had never gone away...

Sad, eh? But perhaps not that surprising... people researching their own local history or something. So of course it made sense to try "BRD", the acronym for the old West Germany, and the one featuring the indubitably awesome word "Bundesrepublik". Well? Here you go...

Isn't that strange? It turns out that only East Germans care about East Germany, but only East Germans care about West Germany too. The Cold War is a non-entity in the former West, it seems. Or rather perhaps politics doesn't make the Wessies tick. What does? Well, I couldn't think of much, until I stumbled on the thought of immigration, and tried "Turk":

There it is! There's West Germany! Where the Turks live!

Google Insights: whisperers

2009-10-29T12:00:00.000-07:00

Ah, a well-travelled meme... when you search only the word 'whisperer', most of the related searches have to do with Jennifer Love Hewitt. However, there certainly have been a fair amount of things out there using the word 'whisperer' - a word that, otherwise, you will agree, is complete crap. Check it out:

It's actually a pretty interesting graph, how Cesar Milan and Jennifer Love Hewitt duked it out for whisper-supremacy before the Party of Five star blew dog-boy out of the water. As random stats go, it turns out they go for Ghost Whisperer most in Singapore (the USA isn't even in the top ten), Dog Whisperer most in the States, Horse Whisperer in South Africa and Baby Whisperer (which I admit I've never heard of) in New Zealand.

Google Insights: newspaper, diario, journal, صحيفة, газета

2009-10-22T12:00:00.000-07:00

So I tried this before with the word 'school' on Google Trends, but you don't get the cool maps. So I tried it again. This is the word 'newspaper' in English, Spanish, French, Arabic and Russian: five languages that to me seemed sufficiently multinational. The resulting maps do, to a limited extent, show the parts of the world where those languages are spoken, though of course 'journal' is a problem, being also an English word. Nonetheless, here you are:

There's the English-speaking world, more or less. Interesting how the UK, the USA, Canada, South Africa and Australia don't even show up in the top ten, which, apart from Bangladesh, is dominated by African countries. In so many searches do I see that cool swath across anglophone Africa from Namibia to Kenya.

How the Spanish-speaking world is dominated by South America... from Argentina on down, it's pretty much all Latin America save Spain itself. I didn't bother to check whether 'diario' is also Portuguese, but I guess it is since the only hues of colour in Africa are in Angola and Mozambique, two Lusophonic parts of Africa.

I didn't think the French one would work, what with 'journal' being a common word in English too. When at first you see all that dark yellow in French West Africa, it seems good. Yet Iran, India and especially Burma are tough to reconcile, and I have no idea why Canada and the USA should be the exact same colour here.

The Arabic one is as interesting for its gaps as for its greens. Yep, that's certainly the Arabic-speaking word. But note for example Iraq's absence. Or how Yemen is much greener than Oman. or, most strikingly, how the Sudan is darkest where its neighbour Egypt is as pale as the USA. Interesting also how Moroccan, Algerians and Tunisians clearly prefer to find their news in French. Of course I know how variant a language Arabic is. It could be that that far west they use a different word.

In the end perhaps the most interesting map in that it shows just how much the effects of previous union linger. In the case of the Ukraine and Belarus, it might be that the local word for 'newspaper' is the same as the standard Russian. But that doesn't go far to explain central Asia and the Caucasus, where people seem more inclined to search in Russian than in their own languages.

Google Insights: blood, sweat, tears

2009-10-15T12:00:00.000-07:00

I guess what Churchill actually said was 'blood, toil, tears and sweat'. But as three of those are bodily fluids and the fourth isn't, the jazz/pop group was right to kick it out. Here, i follow their lead.

No surprise that 'blood' steals the show (averaging 58 versus 7 for tears and 4 for sweat), with people searching for 'blood pressure', 'half blood prince' and 'true blood' (whatever that third one is). The map of where people are searching for blood (no pun intended, we presume) is pretty much just a map of the English-speaking world. With 'sweat', you get the exciting combo of 'Keith Sweat' and 'sweat pants', and 'tears', which for some reason is most popular in the Philippines, seems to have the most to do with Eric Clapton...

Google Insights: alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon

2009-10-08T00:00:00.000-07:00

The first five letters of the Greek alphabet. 'Delta' is reliably the most-Googled, having a hotel chain, an airline and a geographical feature associated with it (Googled most in the United States and in Nigeria, and within the USA Googled most in Alabama), but 'beta' has the most peaks and valleys (most sought in Mauritania, where it must mean something other than half-finished computer programmes). By a large margin it's the Dutch who are most interested in 'gamma', but 'alpha' and 'epsilon' still belong to their rightful owners the Greeks.

Google Insights will also tell you which search phrases including the word in question are being Googled. So with 'alpha', it's the perhaps Biblically motivated 'alpha omega' that's most sought, tied with the perhaps sorority motivated 'alpha kappa alpha'. 'Windows beta' is the search term that wins for 'beta', 'gamma ray' comes in #2 behind 'praxis', something that a Dutch person will hopefully explain to me one day, 'delta delta delta' at #1 is definitely a sorority reference, and the winning search term for 'epsilon' is 'sigma epsilon', which perhaps makes sense to the Greek.

Google Insights: October

2009-10-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

With Google Insights, you can overlay different times, showing how often a single search term was Googled in, for example, different calendar years. You can't embed the result for some reason, but the graph above shows the results for "October". As you can suspect, people Google "October" most often in October (and the end of September too, logically). I suppose the fact that 2008 outperformed 2007, 2006 and 2005 is just because more people use the internet and more people use Google every year.

So in 2009 it has been the Irish who Googled "October" most so far, while it was the Philippines in 2008, the USA in 2007, and Nigeria in 2006 and 2005. I have no idea what to make of those stats.

Google Insights: Oscar winners

2009-09-24T00:00:00.001-07:00

The lifespan of a Hollywood movie: shorter even than the lifespan of certain species of beetle. I wasn't expecting perennial interest, but this does make an interesting graph of the quick rise and quick drop-off of Osscar-winning movies. This represents four of the five most recent Best Picture winners at the Academy Awards ('Brokeback Mountain' lost to 'Crash', a film whose title is too generic to mean much of anything, but still got more Google hits than any other movie here). In each case, the year of their release shows a huge spike, but then an immediate drop-off after that.

Also interesting: the USA shows up at only #9 for searches for "Slumdog Millionaire". The remainder of the top ten is made up entirely of: India (#2), its subcontinental neighbours (Sri Lanka #1, Bangladesh #5, Pakistan #8) or Indian-culturally-influenced countries (UAE #3, Mauritius #4, Singapore #6, Trinidad & Tobago #10). The United States led the searches for each of the others except "Million Dollar Baby", where it came #2 to Italy.

Google Insights: Baptist, Mormon, Lutheran, Catholic, Methodist

2009-09-17T12:00:00.000-07:00

One of the first things I fell in love with on Google Insights was the map function. I am even more of a map geek than I am a stat geek, so I was now in absolute heaven. I tried to find a stat-map that actually had some kind of meaning, and I stumbled across the idea of looking at searches various Christian religions on a state-by-state basis. It’s amazing just how religiously heterogeneous the United States really is and the extent to which each of the fifty so-called ‘states’, while from an international perspective hopelessly similar, actually do have distinct characters. So the graph is included here, but who cares? It’s the maps that steal the show.

The blue map is for the word ‘baptist’, which doesn’t necessarily denote the denomination (there’s John the Baptist, for example), but does tend to. And Bible Belt? Here you have it… the South are busy searching for Baptist this and Baptist that, while not a single state north of the Mason-Dixon line shows up on the Top Ten.

Of course Utah Googled the word “Mormon” the most. If any other result had turned up, I’d have called fraud. But I certainly didn’t expect a result this drastic: Utah so red that Senator McCarthy would rather be dead than visit there, but no one else except for Utah’s immediate neighbours care in the least. Hm.

I don’t know much about Lutherans, and just included this one through some random memory that one of the States bordering Canada had more Lutherans than anywhere else in the States. Yet what a beautiful map: a very specific chunk of the United States likes to Google the word “Lutheran”.

Don’t know what, if anything, to make of the Catholic map: Louisiana is a nice remnant of French rule, but apart from that I had thought it was the Atlantic coast, in particular Massachusetts and New York, where the Catholics lived. If so, I guess they don’t Google themselves. Nebraska I can’t explain at all.

I included Methodists because I couldn’t really think of a fifth… but of a strange map, similar to the Baptists but a bit more widespread. And I think Nebraskans just like Googling religions…

Google Trends: Google Trends, Google Insights

2009-09-10T12:00:00.000-07:00

Ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod… How could I have not seen it? How could I not have seen “Google Insights”, which is like 300% cooler than “Google Trends”? This service, which is pretty much the same thing but improved and using a lot of Adobe Flash, probably should have just been issued as ‘updates to the Google Trends platform’. But those wacky people at Google clearly know better than mere humans like us… so now in the quest for odd pieces of statistical information, I’ll integrate the two services and use little bits of info from both.

Note that Google Insights is actually over a year old: hardly earth-shattering news. I’m just a bit slow to the punch…

Google Trends: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft

2009-09-03T12:00:00.000-07:00

So how weird is it that, even though Google has resoundingly kicked the ass of Yahoo! as search-engine-du-jour, more people Google Yahoo! than Google Google itself? And how weird was that sentence?

I’m a bit sceptical of Microsoft’s low, and lowering, performance here, though of course Google and Yahoo! are branded by their url, whereas Microsoft uses ‘MSN’ as its main internet portal. Adding ‘MSN’ to the mix makes more sense, as it itself is Googled 2.8 times more often than ‘Microsoft’, though still less than Google and Yahoo! And, interestingly, stable across the years whereas Google and Yahoo! are steadily climbing.

Though it’s IT-paradise India that tops the list for Googling both Google and Microsoft, the city that Googles Microsoft most is, hilariously, Seattle, Washington. Perhaps they’re engaging in Google-bombing at HQ?

Oddly enough, India comes in only at 7^th on the Yahoo! list. It’s Malaysia that leads the pack there.

Google Trends: fee, fi, fo, fum

2009-08-27T12:00:00.000-07:00

When cloud-living giants use Google, what do they look for? Well, probably in consort with ‘Wi’, ‘fi’ leads the pack, followed closely by the money-hungry ‘fee’. ‘Fo’ comes in third, and ‘fum’, which in no way rhymes with ‘Englishman’, trails at the end, with less than one-fiftieth of the Google-power of ‘fee’ and ‘fi’.

The blood might be English, but ‘fum’ wins in Romania, where it presumably means something. It’s the Indians who go for ‘fo’, the Finnish who Google their country’s internet domain the most, and the Indians again who are most interested in paying those fees.

Google Trends: John, Paul, George, Ringo

2009-08-20T12:00:00.000-07:00

How interesting that searches for these four names should, by and large, reflect the relative artistic and critical significances of the four Beatles in question, with ‘John’ towering over the rest, followed by ‘Paul’ and ‘George’ in close succession and with ‘Ringo’ fading into insignificance at only one-ninety-fifth of John’s search count.

Obviously, of course, the vast majority of people searching for Johns, Pauls and Georges are looking for people other than Messrs. Lennon, McCartney and Harrison. A certain papal death, for example, explains the twin spikes on ‘John’ and ‘Paul’ in early 2005 (at exactly the same time that I imagine ‘Benedict’ searches climb above Ringo-levels). It’s tough, on the other hand, to imagine any reason other than Mr. Starr why people might be searching for the word ‘Ringo’.

It is quite interesting, I think, that all four of these search terms seem to be dropping with time. I don’t think there are fewer Johns in the world today than there were in 2004. I wonder if it merely means that fewer people are using Google to find people these days: thank you Facebook?

Quick facts: Peruvians love Ringo the most (probably because the word means something in Spanish), Australians George, the Irish Paul and the English George.

Giving the Beatles surnames confirms the roll call, with Lennon at number one and poor Richard Starkey in the basement. Turns out it’s the Norwegians who love Mr. Conductor most, the Argentineans who love the Hindu sitarist, Canadians who love Macca and Mexicans who love Mr. Ono.

Can anyone explain that massive spike in John Lennon Googling at the end of 2005?

Google Trends: Schule, école, escuela, sekolah

2009-08-13T12:00:00.000-07:00

In checking out Google Trends among languages, I decided to focus on the word ‘school’. I wanted to see what the trends looked like in various languages around the world. The first thing I learned was how incredibly dominant the English language is in Google searches, with the English word ‘school’ overpowering the others so much that it quite defeated the purpose. So erasing English from the equation, I am left with “Schule” in German, “école” in French, “escuela” in Spanish and “sekolah” in Bahasa Indonesia.

It seems, then, that Spanish wins. Not surprisingly, I suppose, in that it’s spoken in so many countries. I was surprised to find how badly Bahasa Indonesia performed, since Indonesia is no small country. Global distribution of Internet users, I suppose, or at least of Google users.

It’s really a beautiful graph though, with its intricate series of peaks and valleys more or less identical among the three European languages, with sudden dips corresponding to school breaks in February, in summer and at Christmas time. The country searches offer no real surprises, with ‘sekolah’ being searched to any real extent only in Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei, ‘école’ mainly in francophone France, Morocco, Belgium, Switzerland and Canada, ‘Schule’ in Switzerland, Germany and Austria, and ‘escuela’ in a huge list of countries, all Spanish-speaking. Mexico tops the list, Colombia comes in at #10 (Google Trends shows no more than that). In Switzerland they search for ‘Schule’ about three times as often as they search for ‘école’, but Lausanne looks very bilingual indeed as the two terms are Googled more or less equally.

Google Trends: winter, spring, summer, fall

2009-08-06T12:00:00.000-07:00

Here’s a very pretty graph to get us started. As you might expect, people search for certain seasons on Google more often during that season than at other times of the year. Thus, each search term here has annual peaks and valleys, exactly as expected. The incredible stupidity of the fourth season having two names means that searches for ‘autumn’ are not included – though they’re far less than these four anyway. I’m not surprised that ‘summer’ is the most searched-for term, but I am surprised that winter comes in fourth. I also find 2008 very intriguing, where three of the four seasons experienced a sudden spike and spring in particular went haywire. What was so interesting in the spring of 2008 about the word ‘spring’?

No surprise that Canadians searched the most for ‘winter’, but odd that the city with the most searches for ‘winter’ is Orlando, Florida – perhaps Canadian snowbirds Googling pictures of the season they were no longer experiencing. It’s the Americans who Googled ‘spring’ and ‘summer’ most, but for ‘fall’ (which of course does have a secondary meaning), the #1 country inexplicably becomes the Philippines. What is it the Filipinos love so much about that season?

Understanding Google Trends: Introduction

2009-07-30T12:00:00.000-07:00

What is Google Trends? Frankly, I have no idea. I mean, I know what it is, but I’m not really sure why anyone would use it. It shows, going back a few years, how many people at any given time have searched for any particular word or phrase. It also shows how many news articles have mentioned the same phrase, and it offers gobs of information about which cities and countries search most for it. For people who love statistics for their own sake, it’s hours of meaningless information. For everyone else, it’s a meaningless bore. Personally, I’m a bit of both groups of people, and in this blog I will, for no clear reason that I can understand, analyse for your benefit certain Google Trends.

Hell, why not, right?

Understanding Google Trends

Google Insights: Wikileaks and Wikipedia

Google Insights: Santa's Reindeer

Google Insights: Ron Paul and Rand Paul

Google Insights: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday

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Google Trends: Google Trends, Google Insights

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Understanding Google Trends: Introduction