The Google Alphabet, 2008 edition

Stavros [26 August 2008 11:03 PM]

I'd suggest that the John Lewis and Sears entries are flawed. I cant for a second believe that "john lewis" is more popular as a search term than "jobs" is neither can I believe that that "sears" is more popular than "skype" - Remember: google is an advertising company, search is the platform. One word comes to mind "AUCTION"

Richard [27 August 2008 12:16 AM]

G = gmail
H = hotmail
...
X = xbox (the only Microsoft product to make the list this year; hotmail was a part of the alphabet in 2004 and gmail was not)

Michael Moncur [27 August 2008 12:47 AM]

Yes, quotes are quite popular - at least when you compare them to other things that start with Q.

The Quotations Page is busy enough to run on two dedicated servers and serve as an almost full-time job for my wife and I.

(Note the correct URL for The Quotations Page in my URL)

yaph [27 August 2008 02:17 AM]

According to Google trends the phrase Google is much more popular than Gmail, which confirms your finding that popularity cannot be the only factor, though it certainly is a very important one. What about advertiser competition and adwords prices?

DC [27 August 2008 02:38 AM]

Worth noting that this is only the Google English Alphabet. My local google home page (google.cz) has a completely different set of results)

john [27 August 2008 03:41 AM]

This reminded me I went through this exercise back in 04 as well; I also included 0-9, of which only 3 (02, 411 and 50 cent) still remain.

Jamie [27 August 2008 04:47 AM]

Its interesting that Google hasn't localised it yet across different English speaking regions. DC noted that its different in Chinese, but on Google.co.uk from the UK, we see exactly the same result as you do. Sears isn't exactly relevant here.

David Bradley [27 August 2008 09:35 AM]

It's odd that John Lewis is in there...very odd. They're a quality brand and claim to be never knowingly undersold, although they now exclude internet prices! (I got my new TV before they changed the rules, saved the equiv of $200 and got a five-year warranty too). But what relevance to the RoW they have I don't know. Oh, they're also a private company and all staff have shares.

brady forrest [27 August 2008 09:51 AM]

Oops, i totally missed hotmail in the list when i wrote that xbox comment. Thanks!I'm gonna correct it.

@Stavros -- I bet you're right. It does S & J may have more to do with advertising revenue than query popularity.

Jorge Rosa [27 August 2008 11:00 AM]

Tried it on Apr 21st. Here are the differences:
IMDB
Next
Orkut
QVC
Verizon (only)
XBox 360

DC [27 August 2008 12:56 PM]

@Jamie - that's Czech Republic, not China;)

Michael Saunby [28 August 2008 06:42 AM]

The John Lewis reference might be due to the phrase "John Lewis list", a list of some dubious entitlements for MPs (members of parliament), that are apparently determined by the costs of such items in the John Lewis catalogue. e.g. they can claim £1000 for a bed! See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7295150.stm
This was quite a big news story in the UK earlier this year.

Ross Stapleton-Gray [28 August 2008 09:56 AM]

I would recommend "xkcd" instead of "xbox," but that's just me and a million others.

nmw [30 August 2008 12:17 PM]

Interesting -- a clear indication of how Google-Users form a community / social network (not only the people who search, but also the people who create websites and/or "spam" websites with links ;)

Obviously, Google-fans would be more likely to search for photobucket than say paypal -- after all: photobucket is a NewsCorp property.

Joseph Smarr [31 August 2008 10:18 AM]

Fun post Brady, thanks. I love infoporn like this! :)

Clément [31 August 2008 12:23 PM]

Interesting :).
Also interesting is the fact that I wrote the French Google Alphabet on August 28th, without knowing about this one !
Please feel free to come and check it out :
http://myurl.fr/2762

Akky AKIMOTO [31 August 2008 05:53 PM]

Interesting idea. I wrote Japanese one here.
http://asiajin.com/blog/2008/09/01/google-alphabet-in-japanese-and-other-languages/

Also made a list of French/Spanish/Chinese/Korean/Russian
http://akimoto.jp/googlesuggest/

I could see the differences between "global" brands and English-local brands there. Hope you enjoy it.

Yuliya [ 1 September 2008 06:55 AM]

I should say that the number of entries for bbc anc cnn is more than for bebo and craiglist as you put it. The wrds of yours R the first to appear but not the most popular

Ari Herzog [ 1 September 2008 11:55 PM]

I just stumbled across this page via David Bradley's utube hack, referencing the letter "U" above.

Oddly, I never knew about this Google Alphabet before. I plugged in some letters, though, and see different results.

For instance, "e" goes to eonline.com; "t" goes to a Google result page; and "k" goes to the Wikipedia page for the letter K.

I didn't check anything else. Is there a master list somewhere?

kpaul [ 2 September 2008 01:51 AM]

I bet the results are different depending on your geographic location?

K. Paul Mallasch - Publisher
http://www.kpaulmedia.com

Neil [ 3 September 2008 02:16 PM]

Brady, there is another factor you are forgetting that Google uses in choosing the terms displayed.

These links make your "P" and "S" graphs above look a little small by comparison!

Hope they amused you as much as me.

David Johnson [11 September 2008 07:38 PM]

Brady, I have a real-time display of the google alphabet at my site under docs. I think the google alphabet is fascinating. I didn't know who katy perry was until her name showed up there. Also, the olympic stars have shown up recently. If you have a moment please check it out under real-time google alphabet under docs at davidj.org.

Joe Nachon [12 September 2008 10:31 PM]

@Stavros -- you're wrong: actually, Google is losing money buy suggestions like "john lewis". If in you're in the US, "john lewis" shows zero ads (check out: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=john+lewis&btnG=Google+Search&aq=1&oq=j&gl=us -- the "&gl=us" sets it to behave like you're in the States). But for the 2nd term, "jobs", there are tons of ads, no matter where you are; e.g., http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=jobs&btnG=Google+Search&aq=1&oq=j&gl=us ...

So, there's something else at play; not auctions. I wonder. Could be that recent spikes in popularity have more weight?

Joe Nachon [12 September 2008 10:33 PM]

@Stavros -- you're wrong: actually, Google is losing money by suggestions like "john lewis". If in you're in the US, "john lewis" shows zero ads (check out: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=john+lewis&btnG=Google+Search&aq=1&oq=j&gl=us -- the "&gl=us" sets it to behave like you're in the States). But for the 2nd term, "jobs", there are tons of ads, no matter where you are; e.g., http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=jobs&btnG=Google+Search&aq=1&oq=j&gl=us ...

So, there's something else at play; not auctions. I wonder. Could be that recent spikes in popularity have more weight?

Flug [16 October 2008 06:32 AM]

Very well then. I´d also expected skype to be on first place, but ok. Who knows what happened there? I am looking forward to the next update.
@Joe, this is what I´d also expect.

blackshot [29 December 2008 01:12 AM]

I was expecting..

I = iphone
P = Photoshop

Cody [13 June 2009 10:34 AM]

There's a website out there called Search Engine Alphabet (www.searchalphabet.com) that tracks Google's predictive word for each letter of the alphabet. Kinda cool.

Moveis [ 9 August 2009 10:05 AM]

Very good

XTC-Templates [24 August 2009 10:07 AM]

Its interesting that Google hasn't localised it yet across different English speaking regions.

Stephen [18 November 2009 09:27 PM]

Yeah Joe Nachon , i just checked the results and i am really surprised with the results.

Rechnungsprogramm [17 September 2010 10:09 AM]

Great list, very interesting.

Welsangeln [30 November 2010 10:49 AM]

Hi Brady, great site.

Haarentfernung [18 January 2011 10:54 AM]

Great list, very interesting. Greetings from Germany