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Google Reveals Popular Search Patterns
danec writes "Google has finally put up a page showing off its popular searches. Called the Google Zeitgeist (meaning: the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era) it will be updated monthly, weekly or even daily as circumstances warrant." This is actually a lot more then just a "Top 10 List" and I hope they update it frequently. I especially like how they compare searches for related words (Aimster/Napster in this edition). It would be fun to do the same for politicians during elections, or movies competing for the same blockbuster release date. You can do fascinating stuff with the amount of data Google has.
They are the top 10 GAINING queries.
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If Google was running on windows instead of linux would the things we could do with the google search data be fascinating or would it be violating our right to search privately?
--"Karma is justice without the satisfaction"
If 'zeitgeist' annoys you, then you must really hate this:
ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS!
Das komputermaschine ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist easy blowenfusen, schnappen der springenwerk, und poppencorken mit spitzensparken. Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumkopfen. Das rubbernecken sightseeren keepen das hands in der pockets, relaxen, und watchen das blinkenlights.
This is probably biased by the effect of porn surfers owning a large set of bookmarks for sites that all include links - why would they search Google?
This is probably true of a lot of the "declining searches" as well. It doesn't mean the public's lost interest, but just that they found what they're looking for. It seems to me that the Google Zeitgeist can at best measure the rate of change of interest in new topics.
Helium balloons want to be free.
No, they we find out what women and men who pose as women really want!
I wonder how much this list will affect future measurements? I know that when I saw "edonkey" on the Top 10 declining searches, I did a search to see what it was...
Envy my 5 digit Slashdot User ID!
It should be noted that english is descended from both German and French. English is the result of a norman man-at-arms trying to get in bed with a saxon barmaid. There's also some church latin in there. Recently, American english has imported Hawaiian, Japanese, Spanish, and others.
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Do you have the google IE toolbar installed? I know that it does some logging of searches and pages visited and things like that. If you don't have it installed you should. It's realy slick. I like it even better than the address bar Google searches in Konqueror.
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I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
Eh? Try the query "+to +be +or not +to +be", including the quotes. There's a reason that google spouts that stuff about 'to' and 'be' being fairly uninformative words.
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And if you take a look at some stat's (eg: http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/mediamet
you'll see that Google is steadily increasing in use (doubling in 5 months) whereas Altavista lost something like a third of its use in the same time.
I don't think it's necessarily German. It just so happens that some languages have a single word that expresses an idea more succinctly than in English.
Notice how we define the word "Zeitgeist" in English as "the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era." So instead of saying the latter phrase, we can just steal a single word from Germany. If we could define the word "Zeitgeist" as "well, it means the same as 'flgrogbrsa' in English, then we'd have no reason to use the German word. I guess we could go to the trouble of making up our own in English, but people in this country have problems as it is with the words we've got.
There are exceptions, of course, but I think when people borrow German words it's because there's no good English equivalent.
Now, French on the other hand, is a different story. People in the US use French all the time when there are perfectly acceptable English subtitutes: lèse-majesté (detraction from dignity), par excellence (being the best kind), nouveau riche (new rich), etc. So in that case, we have no excuse. And of course, when people in the US say these French words, they pronounce them perfectly, much to the glee of French people everywhere.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
Couldn't they at least provide the queries to link to from their Top Ten lists? What's up with the rise and fall of the Carol Brady Maiden Name search? There must have been a Millionaire question or the like. I find the lists to be titillating to the point of frustration.
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It would be nice if they included the top 10 clicked links so we know who google directed to the most. Though maybe they don't collect that info. If they did it would also be interesting to see if their partners or premium customers or whatever had more clicks or not.
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
above site has a scrolling ticker showing the top 30 *unfiltered* search terms. some entries:
1 sex
2 mp3
3 hotmail
4 games
5 cars
6 yahoo
7 music
8 pokemon
9 warez
10 britney
12 porn
13 ebay
18 napster
20 free porn
24 hotmail.com
25 porno
does anybody else find it odd that people search for yahoo? it's like looking up 'dictionary' in a dictionary.
andy
How can Google be sure? He spelt his name differently from time to time himself.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Because not every person searching is from the states. I know that "Loft Story" is a French reality TV show... You can see a picture of the winner here. She's pretty cute...
Anyway, that might explain...
Jethro
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
... /. articles would be interesting as well
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It's like "doppelganger". Why do Germans have a word for that? Does it happen a lot over there? Really, I'm curious.
To be honest, the only thing that really surprised me there was how small a percentage of queries were adult related. Wasn't that get rich quick porn guy telling us only the other day on slashdot that adult searches dominated the rankings?
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Let's go ahead and put Japanese on the list of "bastard" languages that "steal" from others.
Somebody will have to draw me a diagram here as to how adopting a foreign language word somehow diminish the parent language. Must be something like software "piracy".
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
So you geeks in high school or college that want a social life -- all you have to do is find the "rising top 10", click on a few, eliminate the ones that aren't part of your culture (e.g. French Big Brother), and voila, you're on top of the trends.
Best yet, you can say "Naah, I gave that up, it's so over" when you see 'em on the declining top-10.
The first few times, it'll be passed off as coincidence. Two or three big fads later, and all the "cool people" at school will forever wonder how the hell you always seem to know what's trendy before they do.
Once the whole school is following your lead as Supreme Arbiter Of Cool, fuck with their heads. Start a Tux-The-Penguin tattooing craze, for instance...
Zeitgeist n. (zeit-geist): the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era.
1. "OMG, Wimbledon is on! I wonder if somebody's tits have ever fallen out during a match?"
2. "OMG, Paula Poundstone NO!! You're too funny to get stinky fingers from bubblegummers! Somebody please tell me it's not true!"
3. "OMG, Jack Lemmon died!!!!! But, but...but he's not supposed to be DEAD! I bet I can find him still alive somewhere online."
4. "OMG, I was going to fly out to meet Mr. goatse.cx! Surely the strike is over by now!?"
5. "OMG, I bet if I searched for Barbara Schett she would have sex with me!"
6. "OMG, Napster was shut down, wasn't it? Or was it! I want the new N-Sync single 'I wanna do it in your butt' on mp3!!! Where the hell is Napster???"
7. "OMG, I love catch phrases sooooooo much!!!!"
8. "OMG, people are racing bicycles again!!! There's no time for annual sales reports or gay pr0n when people are racing BICYCLES through le French countryside! C'est bon!"
9. "OMG, I like basketball and I've inexplicably found cause to use Google for my search engine. I'm sure glad my nerdy friend told me why it's supposed to be better than AOL's Internet, but I sure do miss all the pr0n...anyway, maybe they'll finally draft me into the NBA if I look it up online. I coulda made it..."
10. "OMG, Vicky Botwright is so awesome!!! Maybe she'll sleep with me if I look her up on the Internet. It is TOO a real sport, asshole! Squash has been around for EVER! PBBBBHT!!!!!"
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
-The Professor, Futurama