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For a more real-time view of what people are searching for, try Metaspy. It shows you what the last 10 search strings at Metacrawler were. There was nothing really suprising in the Google Zeitgiest report, but the stuff you'll see people searching for on Metaspy can really make you do a double-take.

What's even better is when they type in www.cnn.com into the search field! You see it more often than you might think.

me too.

is at MetaSpy.com.

I have been watching the feed for about 5 min, and I notice that there are a lot of searches for "food" (the artice mentions this). I wonder why. Recipes? or just very hungry people with internet access looking for a way to get some grub? any other ideas?

Does Google have an area where real-time search queries are displayed?

Afraid not - the closest Google have is the Google zeitgeist

However - some of the other (crappier) search sites do.

The only one I can find at the moment is Metacrawler's Metaspy. God - just been watching it for a few seconds - it includes the gems:

* how to measure body fat percentage with a tape measure and scale
* thongs for 7 year olds
* ubaid alien
* uncensored olympic gymnastic photos

I also found The Disturbing Search Requests Page - gleaned from some guy's referrer logs...It includes such goodies as 'clitoris size scale' and 'vampire "breasts grow"'

Hey, what do you know, it was a search engine, and it was a blatant ripoff.

It doesn't even have some of the fun features of the others.

It's still there in a slightly different incarnation.... http://www.metaspy.com

i think this is the site you are referring to.

enjoy!

http://www.metaspy.com/info.metac.spy/metaspy/unfi ltered.htm
See what people are searching for on MetaCrawler...

From a vague memory of the last major /. article about Google, don't they have a censored realtime display of searches scrolling behind their reception desk?

And what you're thinking of is Metaspy - it still has that uncensored option. ;D

What sick and twisted things are people searching for?

Disturbing Search Requests: what blog owners find when looking through referrers in web server logs. These tend to be several-word searches, because single-word searches wouldn't take you to a random blog. Examples: "How to suck breasts", "build a giant robot", "cuntless otters", "worlds greatest asshole".

Google Adwords Keyword Suggestions: type a search term, and it will give common multiple-word searches that include your term. If you type in "porn", the multiple-word searches are child porn, free porn, kiddie porn, chill porn, cartoon porn, porn stars, gay porn, kid porn, lego porn, sex porn, porn nude, moose porn, and lesbian porn.

Keyword City: 10 most popular search words for the Sex & Pornography category. I don't know how reliable this site is. The top 10 are babe, sex, porn, hardcore, nude, xxx, anal, nudist, naked, and boob.

Metaspy Exposed: random searches on the Metacrawler search engine in real time. Because these are random, you may have to reload several times before you'll see any porn searches.

Yeah you can still do that today with METASPY which shows random queries to the search engine METACRAWLER which of course, uses different search engine to drive its results.

There are two types of "spying". The first is filtered, and the second is naked!

Metacrawler's Metaspy. Check out what people are searching for on Metacrawler. Choosing the "Metaspy Exposed" option allows you to see unfiltered queries; a surprising number of them are quite shady. ;)

A few years back the search engine metacrawer ("Search the search engines!") set up a service called "metaspy" that showed search queries which were being processed. Aparently they didn't want to get into any trouble by exposing kids to uncensored searches, so they set up two viewing modes, each with an icon. The "clean" version's icon is a typical sleuth character in green holding a magnifying glass and a pipe; this was the old metaspy icon. The new "metaspy exposed" icon for unfiltered search viewing also features a typical sleuth character, but one whose trenchcoat is open and is clearly not wearing and pants.

I used to kill hours watching the search requests scroll by on Metacrawler's Metaspy page back when people still used Metacrawler. Any chance we could have something like that on Google? I would *almost* even pay to subscribe to a site where I could watch uncensored Google search requests go by.

Well, I hate to be nitpicky, but I'm pretty sure Yahoo!'s Buzz came first, and that Metacrawler's Metaspy came even before that. This study provides a more long range view along the same lines. I'm trying to start a web page that lists these sorts of "what are people interesed in" sites around the Net. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd be very interested.

Kinda reminds me of those people who type in www.randomwebsite.com in a search engine. Really, if you know the address why not just type it in? I am not making this up. Saw it happen while watching MetaSpy one day.

Don't know about overall term ranking, but quite a few search engines allow you to view what people are searching for right now. Try metacrawler's "metaspy" for one example.

In case you didn't know, you can go to Metaspy to view searches that are underway on Metafind. I saw a similar link for Google once, but I don't remember where it is. Metafind isn't Google, but its searches show pretty much the same trends this story shows.

For a slightly less censored view of the average internet user, check out MetaSpy. Be careful, though; it's highly addictive. A friend of mine even went so far as to write a little program that retrieved new searches and scrolled them past in a little ticker-tape window just so he wouldn't miss anything.

-x1r0k3wl

An aside about the changing nature of the web-wandering public:

Wow, I've just come back from checking out the unfiltered (i.e. allows porn-associated searches to appear) metaspy voyeur site. Folks, I think the internet public may be changing. When I first checked this out for several weeks ~1 yr ago, most of the searches were porn related. This time, out of about ~100 search queries, I saw only a few of sex-related ones. Are things changing? That would be nice.

______________________(
// ///#\)

Ah but they give you metaspy and that's just funny.

metaspy.com to find out what searches other people are running on metacrawler.com. There are both censored and uncensored version of metaspy. ;-)