Sat
Aug 12
2006
Fun with Google Trends
by Tim O'Reilly
My friend Kevin Barker mentioned how much fun he was having with Google Trends, not looking for any specific trends, but just looking for fun patterns and shapes. I thought I'd pass along the thought for those of you with time on your hands this weekend :-) Many of the examples on the Google Trends home page have interesting shapes, but here are a few of the fun searches Kevin mentioned:
Periodicity: full moon, cinco de mayo vs. groundhog day
Seasonality: shorts vs. sweaters
Short attention span: American Idol vs. weapons of mass destruction (American Idol is pretty interesting all by itself!)
Falling off a cliff: John Kerry
One thing that this makes me think is that Google ought to explore the concept of "interestingness", like flickr does. I've been meaning to blog on that subject. RSN.
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Comments: 9
Doh! it's the end of the semester already!?
http://www.google.com/trends?q=free+essays
(though the silver lining on this one is it would appear this type of blatant plagiarism is trending downward)
Looks like there are lots of mommies kissing Santa Claus:
my favorite for seasonality is always http://www.google.com/trends?q=sunglasses&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all nothing that surprising just pretty cool in general
nice seasonality counterpoint
http://www.google.com/trends?q=skiing%2C+sunglasses&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all
What's more interesting about the skiing example is that it produces a graph that resembles a mountain range!
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Ben Tucker [08.12.06 07:33 AM]
Apparently, we only try to cook on Thanksgiving and Christmas:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=recipe