Google Insights: Poor Chile

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.

American States: big cities

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?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Boston population rises to 645K (boston.com)
• The world's most expensive cities (money.cnn.com)
• Los Angeles with Little Kids (california-travel.suite101.com)
• Think Tank: 46 States Facing Greek-Like Budget Crisis (businessinsider.com)
• Apartment Therapy over Chicago & LA! (apartmenttherapy.com)

Vitamins

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.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Vitamin D – the Sunshine Vitamin (lifescript.com)
• Vitamin C: 15 Ways to Eat Your Daily Dose (blisstree.com)
• Vitamin E Shows Promise For Treating Liver Disease (huffingtonpost.com)
• Low Vitamin D Level Tied to Cognitive Decline (biosingularity.wordpress.com)