Google Insights: two-letter combinations, part two

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.