Slashdot Mirror
2004 Year-End Google Zeitgeist
krgallagher writes "Google has published their Year-End Zeitgeist. In their own words, 'Based on billions of searches conducted by Google users around the world, the 2004 Year-End Zeitgeist offers a unique perspective on the year's major events and trends. We hope you enjoy this aggregate look at what people wanted to know more about this year.' The number one search for all of 2004 is britney spears."
When will it ever end?
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
Nowhere on that page will you see a single popular search for BSD. You know what this confirms...
Is my browser stats.
(No, I don't want stats from some other site. I want them from the Zeitgeist!)
Porn doesn't seem to be in much of the mix. If you look at the 'images', blow-job doesn't even show up.
Where are they! :)
All people care about are celebs and "who wants to X my Y" shows. No wonder this world is in a death spiral.
Heh, it's ... nice to see SCO as the top searched-for company. I guess it pays to be in that position, but we're gonna have to wait and see if it changes anything.
What a bad year.......
When the human race evolves into an intelligent species?
printed paper w/ glue? or am I too old for this.
Actually, the top four queries were all women: Spears, Hilton, Aguilera, Anderson. I think they image search results might be skewing the data. :D
What they fail to mention is that people were searching for places to chat about Britney, Paris, Christina and Pamela.
Successfully condensing fact from the vapor of nuance since 1998.
Britney Spears is the top search..and scroll down a bit to "top company searches" to see that SCO is in the lead. This confirms my theory that people are fascinated with stupidity in all it's forms.
Wow... The Tablet PC... The Microsoft invention... #1 in google's froogle search for computer goodies. What in the world happened with that one? I guess the boys over at www.tabletpcbuzz.com gotta be happy.
I'm not going to say anything about the Britney Spears bit...
Jerry
http://www.syslog.org/
The unfiltered top 10:
1. britney spears nude
2. paris hilton nude
3. christina aguilera nude
4. pamela anderson nude
5. adult chat
6. games warez
7. carmen electra nude
8. orlando bloom nude
9. harry potter warez
10. mp3 warez
how is cricket in the top 10 sports?
i guess i'm missing some subtle nuance of the word?
google: linux USB redhat "not working"
(or something to that affect, i am not picking on USB or redhat)
Take a look at the previous Zeitgeists, mate. She's been up there ever since 2001.
Check out the Froogle searches - the clothing ones look like people going for soft-core pr0n.
And thanks to the story having to link the most popular search term, Briney Spears will be even more popular now..
We have the ability to keep knowledge of some of the greatest minds, and provide that knowledge to everyone? But no! "What's that little girl singing about? Let's put her on a CD, to be kept forever!"
I wish I had the exact quote, but it felt fitting to find out that this is what people want to know about on the Internet.
Lovely.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
in finding intelligent life on earth...
...
Seriously though, it just shows how many numbnuts there are out there.
It's no wonder there's a monkey in the white house again
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
Geez, everything is entertainment related, with almost no educational value - unless of course the mp3 search is for people looking into how various compression algorithms work. Sometimes, I think I've found the reason why the world is going screwy. Maybe not.
Given that pattern, I was expecting to see:
9. harry potter nude
I'm rather upset that I don't even appear in the top 10 popular men. When will people recognise me? Maybe I'll have to kill a bunch of people...?
Get your own free personal location tracker
Wow, this zeitgeist really sucks now. It's focused on nothing but search info, which I guess is expected from Google - but demographic information be damned, it seems. They should be looking to gather more information on things like browser, OS, country, etc. Just throwing a load of search terms on a page isn't particularly compelling, especially when they're all so predictable.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
If there is any hope for Western civilization, then the 11th most popular query is for "suicide".
Nice to see Spalding Gray at #3.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Well isn't that just uber.
I doubt it was really in rememberance of his life, but people looking for that horrible video of his death. I admit to having seen it, and still can't get the screams out of my head.
That was sickos looking for pictures and video. That was no "Oh, I'm looking for a Nick Berg memorial site so I can pay tribute".
why isnt janet jackson classified into the 'women' category?
at http://www.gnaa.us/
Top Clothing Queries 2004
1. bikini
2. mini skirt
3. prom dresses
4. lingerie
5. little black dress
6. poncho
7. t-shirt
8. sports bra
9. red dress
10. low-rise jeans
Where's Rick James, Bitch?!?
/ just sayin'
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
What i'm interested in is how Harry Potter beat mp3? What's up with that?
Playstation 2 would have been ahead of xbox if it wasn't also known as PS2. The searches for PS2 + playstation2 would have been ahead of xbox.
The #2 item on local health searches is "hospital". You can just picture millions of people turning to Google before thinking of dialing 911!!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"...and lo, a woman-child child shall be born, and she shall wear a head-dress of round plasic globes on her head as a child....upon the maturation of this child, when the platic globes are removed from her head and become infused in her chest....the end of the world shall surely be near...."
:)
I'm parphrasing...but it's something like that I'm sure
A goal is a dream with a deadline
britney spears is the most popular query, but it's 4th on the list of public figures, while paris hilton did not even make the list.
On the tech stuff category, *kazaa* is the first one and *mp3* the third one, yet *kazaa* did not even make it to the most popular queries one, while mp3 is the tenth string most searched for.There are also other inconsistencies, between for example the *most popular male* category and *most popular male celebrity*. (btw, what's the diff?)
Can somebody shed some insight into this?Come'on world, bazillions of connected systems and the best we come up with is searching for Britney??? That's just so pathetic and sad.
Not to mention the ruin that is Zeitgeist. Google is in the process of proving that excessive greed can and will destroy anything.
The top 4 queries are women's names. The first guy (Orlando Bloom, who was in LOTR) appears after the fifth woman (Carmen Electra, and I don't even know what she did this year that would draw so many searches).
It's clear now. We'll be seeing a lot more of britney spears and paris hilton in bikinis, mini skirts and prom dresses... possibly while they watch CNN, the simpsons, or listen to 'YMCA' on their ipods.
It's interesting to note that Britney Spears was number one not only this year, but the year before. In 2001, she was the most popular female 'searched' too. Doesn't the world realize that there are better singers and models out there?
i wouldn't call this tech stuff:
Popular Tech Stuff 2004
1. wallpaper
2. kazaa
3. mp3
4. spybot
5. linux
Interesting that Paris Hilton is #2 in Queries and Women but Hilton Hotels is #4 in Hotels.
It says something...I just don't know what.
Successfully condensing fact from the vapor of nuance since 1998.
Surprised that iTunes doesnt show up anywhere on these lists.
Apparently the top public figures are: :/
1. george w bush
2. janet jackson
3. john kerry
Therefore Janet Jackson unfortunatly had a better chance of winning the election over Kerry.
In "Top Public Figures", janet jackson appears before britney spears. Since these two are women, why doesn't janet jackson appear before britney spears in the "Popular Women" category?
Just browsing through the US and International statistics I saw a startling lack of anything Harry Potter. Even in the UK!
France is higher than Iraq...I guess we know our REAL enemies...
So since George W. Bush was the number one public figure search, and John Kerry was third, behind Janet Jackson, can we assume that if Janet Jackson had run for president, she would have had a better chance of winning than John Kerry?
Maybe if the elections were held closer to the Superbowl.
Noticed this at the bottom of the page...
PigeonRank
Don't hate on Britney. Every living male with active hormones on this planet want a piece of that. And I bet you /. readers contributed a good percentage of those searches.
He lost to G.W. and Janet Jackson!
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Popular Queries
2004
1. britney spears
2. paris hilton
Top Public Figures
2004
1. george w bush
2. janet jackson
3. john kerry
4. britney spears
Shouldn't britney spears be the top of every list she qualifies for in the zeitgeist if her name is the most popular term overall?
We simply have to face the fact that most people use the internet for porn. This just shows that people have their priorities.
we put hornyness before everything.
I think this says a lot about the way (U.S.) people think about eating. with pizza, sushi, bakery, chinese and italian you might be able to live, but healthy?
P is for Paris Hilton
Or at least, less US influence.
Both the Tour de France and Lance Armstrong were more searched for than NFL. Either less US influence, or those looking for NFL don't know how to use a computer.
I was all set to come all over superior to the average luser, with my more refined taste, disdain for pop culture, etc., etc.
But, much to my dismay, I searched for "roomba" a few months ago.
Guess I'm just one of the sheeple.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
American school children are so stupid compared to lesser, poorer nations. Anyone who spends their time even remotely interested in Britney Spears and her ilk deserves the low grades and poor self-esteem they have.
Recently on BBC News, Finland among other European nations scored (again) the highest overall for literacy, intelligence, and overall school/education well-being.
American kids are too busy trying to find information on twitty celebrities, warez, and other bullshit, rather than attempting to better themselves.
I remember being a teen in the early 80's. I had to go physically to a library to look up information, and that information has stayed with me for years. Education is a journey, not a destination. College education in the US has slowly declined to the point where the average person only has to work at scholastic skills that are barely above the high school level. At one point, people actually had to work at degrees to achieve them. Now... you can get a master's degree without a thesis.
What is America coming to.
Before you start in on me, I am aware that the results are not solely from US searches, but the vast majority are. Most Europeans and Asians could give a monkey's toss about Britney or Paris Hilton. These people are twits. Young people should hold themselves to much higher standards than they do.
It's about time the Cubs beat the Yankees at something!
;)
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction is more popular than John Kerry's botox.
1. bikini
:)
2. mini skirt
3. prom dresses
4. lingerie
5. little black dress
6. poncho
7. t-shirt
8. sports bra
9. red dress
10. low-rise jeans
I wonder who makes all of the clothing decisions?
Here's the google cache.
It's a little out of date, though.
the searches for these are:
1. britney spears
2. paris hilton
3. christina aguilera
4. pamela anderson
5. carmen electra
6. jennifer lopez
7. angelina jolie
8. avril lavigne
9. beyonce
10. hilary duff
When you see a list like this dominate both images and females, you know they are not some poly-sci majors looking for info on pop-politics or teeny boppers seeking J-Lo's opinion of some movie. Nor are they looking for pictures of their "smiles".
Do note that Hillary Clinton didn't even make it in the news queries.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
I could have sworn that I have searched for Asia Carrera atleast a billion times!
God, Root, Whats the difference?
> freeipods.com is not a scam, I've already received mine.
It's still a scam.
Those at the top of the pyramid get the reward (like you), and those at the bottom of the pyramid get ripped off of their invested time and/or money.
Either you're stupid, or you have an ulterior motive.
So these are the keywords I should get my site to show up in google under? Hmmmmmm....
I'd like to know who are all the peope that had to search for ebay in order to find it. I mean, it's not like it's hidden off in its own tiny corner of the internet. And the people searching for it must have spelled it correctly, so they were already 2/3 of the way towards finding it.
there is no real information in repeating what the masses' appetites are, we all know that already. what would be truly interesting is what the underground zeitgeist is. what are the cultural/intellectual avant garde searching for? the masses have forever been boring and forgettable in their predictability. which is why 10,000 years from now a britney spears clone will still be #1 on the list.
They forgot to add "naked" after all of those queries on Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.
Beat the computer, program your life.
Im not in the list, i can sing and i can also make sex videos of myself and leak it onto the internet. I wonder what their competitive edge is, hmm..
People have been using Froogle to look at product pictures rather than to buy I think:
1. bikini
2. mini skirt
3. prom dresses
4. lingerie
5. little black dress
6. poncho
7. t-shirt
8. sports bra
9. red dress
10. low-rise jeans
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
I wonder what the reason is for folks performing a search on terms (especially company names) that are their own domain:
...
ebay
walmart
mapquest
amazon
Is it that people don't realize that they can type these into the address bar or a growing dependence on Google?
...I don't think that I googled for any of these in the past year!
One wonders how something like Amazon, CNN, Fox News, or Ebay makes it here. I don't even have bookmarks for these. I just type in "amazon.com" every time I want to go there. I certainly don't have to search for it!
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
SCO. That was me. And "linux". That was me too.
But "Britney"? I have no idea where that came from. There was that one night when I drank all those Bud Lights...
All but a handful of the top-ranking searches required only one or two familiar keywords to yield meaningful results, a proper name, a place, a single object of interest, such as a sport like cricket.
But will the Zeitgeist total queries that ask the same question in many different ways because users don't know the keywords needed to define and limit their search?
Lindsey Lohan has gotta be steamed...
(posting anonymously for obvious reasons, a 50-year-old fat balding white guy shouldn't
know this stuff)
in bikinis, mini skirts and prom dresses...
In the article, I first read that as pr0n dresses.
Well, makes sense since it was listed under Froogle...
At the bottom they had a link to Pigeon Rank which I find very funny. I don't know how recent it is but it's new to me.
Google is great for the occasional joke like this.
It took all of two months for me to get my ipod. I do admit though, I personally did not put a link to it in my sig.
I signed up, I got five people to sign up. I got an ipod. During those two months, I did not check it every day, I did not hound the five people who signed up. I just signed up. Sent out five emails, and waited a month. Then I went back, put in my order, and waited for it to be delivered. This is a very easy, simple concept.
Nothing is stopping those five people from signing five more people up. They can be on the "top" of the pyramid too if they want.
I am not stupid, but yes, I did have an ulterior motive: to get a free ipod. Now that I have got it, I have nothing further to gain.
I am just pointing out the craziness of modding down people who have a link to freeipods.com.
I'm kind of wondering if there are a few million people out there with borderline (or not so borderline) cases of obsessive-compulsive disorder who type britney or mp3 into google over and over again hoping for something new to show up.
It's kind of like the 1-900 phone polls that allow you to vote over and over again for your favorite <whatever> but get corrupted by a few people using their parents' phone line and the redial button.
If google took more of a one-man one-vote philosophy and only counted a search term once per persistent cookie, they might get a more varied list.
Orlando Bloom?!?
Do people actually use one word searches? Or are these just the most popular searched words? Or does Google aggergate all the different searches into categories? (e.g. "brittney spears CD" and "brittney spears lipsync" ends up as "brittney spears")
What I find interesting is that some people use google to go ebay, cnn, bbc. Many people are using google not as a search engine, but as a quicker way to get to a site than typing www.cnn.com (or even cnn.com). I find it hard to believe that sooo many people don't know the URL for ebay or cnn. Even the BBC has a .com domain!
It might have to do with the fact that many people use google as their home page (or have a google search box in the browser).
You'd never guess that Britney had enough time on her hands to do that many searches on herself!
Than again, maybe you would!
Because zeitgeist is a single word that conveys more information than the three word phrase "year end summary".
More information, fewer words - one of the benefits of an expanded vocabulary. Just ask Homer. ;)
It is somewhat surprising that France, China and India are ahead of Iraq in searches, when there is so much going on in the Mid-East; Google News home page consistently has a new item on Iraq.
Don't know why France got sooo popular, but China and India are there because of BPO.
Oh..OK...Iraq and BPO(job losses) both were election issues.
I guess people read about Iraq once in the morning, and were looking at India and China about jobs rest of the day. Also, it shows that personal issues are always higher than those of nation or the world.
But France is still an enigma to me.
Most popular username:
Anonymous Coward
http://www.google.com/jobs/britney.html
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
Some people just don't get it, I guess.
Search for amazon? Hey, google, how do I find amazon? What's it's URL? Hey, I wonder where on the net Ebay is? How am I gonna find that mapquest site...? Etc.
HEY, DUMMY
AMAZON = AMAZON.COM
give it a try
To see what people are currently searching for live, try Dog Pile Search Spy
Some of the searches can be a little disturbing...
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=zeitgeist
If you had attended elementary school you would most likely have learned that most of the English language is, in fact, derived from other "foreign" languages. I hate to break it to you but English wasn't the first language created just as the US isn't the only country in existance.
At this point, I don't really care about if it does work or not. I'm just really sick and tired of people filling up Slashdot with useless spam. I know that I can turn off sigs, but I'd also miss some good ones. I'm also an IRCop, so I'm constantly being annoyed by having to deal with spammers. Those people also have "an ulterior motive". They're just using a different method of promoting it.
What a frickin time to release such a list when my wife's standing behind me wondering what the hell is keeping me while being devoid of any interest towards what she is saying:
Paris Hilton, Britney, Carmen and Pamela.. Oh Crap!!
I turn around in time to see her look turn in to disgust with the "You and your pervert buddies scored yet again this year!!" before she stomped off in to the kitchen..
Aaargh..time to take care of the History folder..
Rapid Nirvana
I sure hope that there's alot of stuff common to the world which is more important than [insert ditz here].
Of course the whole media blitz thing is a huge factor. This goes along with my point that there is a huge cycle of crap going around and around, feeding off of itself.
I don't claim to be an intellectual, maybe I just read to much into the list w/o considering all of the factors contribute to the number of hits.
If only Keith Jarrett had tits and could dance he'd be popular too. (sigh)
"Hmmm..I sure have heard a lot about this there Amazon thing. I wonder how to find it online. I know, I'll ask that Google thingamabog."
(Slamming my head against my desk repeatedly)
I thought the nazis were out of power by now.
Is anyone else puzzled at why "britney spears" is the #1 overall query but also appears as #4 on the public figures list? If she is a public figure and the largest query, then why isn't she #1 there too? Do they have some method or classifying "britney spears" queries in to those that are public figure queries and those that are not?
Look at the top five popular consumer brand names:
1. ebay
2. walmart
3. mapquest
4. amazon
5. home depot
All of these have easy-to-remember addresses, yet people still seem to use search engines to find their sites. Note that the year's results are split between actual Web searches and news searches, so I don't believe it can be factored in that people are just trying to find news about those companies.
It seems more likely that people assume Google, MSN, or Yahoo search boxes are the "gateways" to The Internet. Is the address bar turning into a purely geek-related "feature?"
http://www.google.com/press/intl-zeitgeist.html Only them put "thesis writing" into top 10.
more traffic to slashdot: good charlotte, brad pitt, home depot, mini skirt, real estate, prom dresses, tour de france hair salon, days inn, flat panel monitor, best buy, kazaa, zimbabwe, webcam, adidas, tiffany, michael moore, michael jackson, india, dr martens, parmalat, walmart, sheraton, massage, portable dvd player, inuyasha, pizza, ugg boots, big brother, ray-bans, notebook computer, baseballs, roomba, air canada, guy cloutier, office, stelco, costco, car dealer, red dress, canadian tire, canadian idol, holiday inn, residence, david beckham 50 cent, lingerie, katie price, movies, pocket bike, birkenstocks, tablet pc, carmen electra, barnes & noble, kenneth cole, chinese, eminem, eastenders, steve madden, fairfield inn, spongebob, campground, poncho, weather, south park, martha stewart, t-shirt, sushi, bowling, italian, running shoes, jennifer lopez, jennifer ellison, hospital, american idol, marriott, jessica simpson, british airways, dictionary, dentist, justim timberlake, justin timberlake, speakers, blockbuster video, metallica, wimbledon, pamela anderson, angelina jolie, wireless, motel 6, marilyn manson, avril lavigne, family guy, camilo mejia, manolo blahnik, little black dress, bob marley, pokemon, charmed, plasma tv, bbc news, pda, ymca, inn, yoga, zoo, mp3, gps, spa, orlando bloom, armani, pub, puma, avian influenza, cbbc, ipod, nike, arsenal, golf, bikini, johnny depp, canon, beyonce, aeron, nikon, treo, euro, iraq, tent, chat, britney spears, xbox, ebay, spybot, tesco, national lottery, kinko's, airsoft guns, laptop, hilton, doctor, ashton kutcher, amazon, headphones, wallpaper, low-rise, hilary duff, bakery, poker chips, usher, walgreens, attorney, insurance broker, gas scooter, the simpsons, embassy suites, games, paris hilton, christina aguilera, louis vuitton, jeans, aerosole, playstation 2, marathon, electric scooter, night vision goggles, nightclub, digital camera, digital camcorder, paintball, mountain bike, depot, autotrader, hampton inn, sports bra, man utd, circuit city, computer, computer speakers, mapquest, cyprus, rolex, linux, harry potter
my opinion is the the top "whatever you want" word in all searches is "sex".
-- my 2 cents
was that goatse.cx went offline this year.
Let's have a moment of silence, please...
This is my first time looking at this annual data, and the most striking thing about it is how vanilla it is.
There is nothing interesting going on; it appears most people are depressingly mundane in their interests and tastes. Where are all the 'rugged individualists', the 'rebels without a cause'? As much as we pay lip service to our desire to stand-out, we are strangely sheepish.
I am begining to believe Asimov's 'The Marching Morons' is, in fact nonfiction...
This is why all marketing is incredibly stupid, because it is based on the most common attribute in order to maximize profits.
Conversely, we have the technology today to automate the personalization of products - which, strange as it may seem, would actually produce more profit (consider, not only would we gather all of the vanilla folks, we would also pull in those wanting unique attributes: X + Y > X every time). Yet most, if not all businesses refrain from this approach.
Given that - this data is useless to me, other than to make me look around at my fellow men and women for the tell-tale vacuous stare.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Jesus Christ man - hot stuff and all that rot - but you ought to give blokes a headsup about non-work-safe links!
See that long UID - that's what you get for lurking too long
"They can be on the "top" of the pyramid too if they want."
you are truly stupid. how do you think the site owner makes money? the actual pyramid is fake. you're just paid off to convince they others who are just as brain dead as you.
With pornography and sex related items being some of the most popular queries for search engines, why do they never seem to make it in to Google Zeitgeist?
slashdot!=valid HTML
um, don't you see how i put (NSFW) after the link?
I like blogger, gmail, the search engine - they just kick ass all around.
Bush was a load Barbara should've swallowed.
The chap needs to learn his bloody acronyms! Boy-o.
Bah, at my company that's mild. You should see what crap I get in my email box (from other employees!).
I am not trully stupid. I'll thank you not to drop to that level again, I'm not interested in flame wars, and I'll not perpetuate them.
Honestly, I do not care how the site owner makes money. I signed up for inFone service (that cost me nothing, and got me a $10 gift card to amazon.com). I never even had to worry about cancelling a trial. Read this carefully, it is a NET GAIN for me. I used a throw-away email, so bonus, I dont get any spam. If you still dont understand this, then read it again below:
This - Cost - Me - Nothing - But - My - Time
This - Cost - My - Referrals - Nothing - But - Their - Own - Willingly - Donated - Time
Every person I know who submitted five referrals has received an iPod. Now, if someone wants to give up half way through their referrals, that's their own problem. It's not the fault of the site operator, and it's no reflection on my own intellect.
Now if I was the only person I knew who received an iPod, then yes, I would say they were giving a few our to incent the crowd; but as far as I know and can tell, that is not happening.
Thus far, your argument has been a sum total of "Some people don't have patience, and you're stupid!". That's not very convincing, is it?
On the other hand, I have contributed "I received mine in a timely manner, as has everyone else I know who completed the requirements."
Who do you suppose people are more likely to believe?
If you have anything further of interest to share then feel free to reply, but I'll not continue to reply to insults and ill thought out arguments. You do not appear to be convincing anyone else, and you certainly are not convincing me.
Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - Ovidius
Can you do the same with viagra and cialis?
Playboy
(quietly goes back to searching for britney spears and george bush on google)
See that long UID - that's what you get for lurking too long
Or at least good looking models I guess...
Speaking of britney spears (no, not a gem, the site is):
http://www.google.com/jobs/britney.html
Because,
We know who shot Abraham Lincoln.
We know who shot John F. Kennedy.
We know who shot at Reagan.
I am SO posting this anon.
I wonder what happened to the overall images.google.com top10... it must have been too filthy to put it on there:P
0x or or snor perron?!
If anyone didn't notice, Linux is number 5 on tech stuff searches. If the same people who search for Britney Spears and Spongebob are searching for Linux, maybe it's making a dent.
Real programmers can write assembly code in any language. -- Larry Wall
The most searched name in 2004 was Britney Spears. The following quote is ridiculous regardless of the sitting president.
Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision he makes and should just support that, you know, and be faithful in what happens.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
Looking for T&A, thugz and toons.
And we thought television was the vast wasteland.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Google's new service "Google Suggest" (beta) uses the same algorithm to guess what you're looking for and suggest terms while you type.
... >> Google suggests: poems, pottery barn, post office, etc... [not what we're looking for]
A quick test reveals that this service, like the Zeitgeist, is completely out of touch with reality too:
-Type: "po"
-Continue: "por"... >> Google still suggests silly things like: porsche, portable dvd players, etc... [obviously not what we're looking for, can't afford it]
-Let's stick to it: "porn"... >> Google has just stopped suggesting alternatives, although it could have mentioned "pornalíy" (a beautiful town in Slovakia), "pornattaya" (a famous Thai writer), "pornocrates" (a classic painting by Belgian artist Félicien Rops), etc...
This is disapp...
hey they have the stats per country too.. (google.nl/zeitgeist in my case) cool :)
slashdot the google search for the term 'britney spears', thus guarenteeing it a top-10 spot on the 2005 zeitgeist... nice going, /.!
there is simply no mentions of the iraq war and the US elections? looks like something is wrong somewhere as these two were heavy issues this year...
Seems weird to me.
Zeitgeist Archive
Overall, I would like to see a "top political issues" category.
That's a bizarre number one seatch query seeing as she hasn't really done much musically all year. All she did was get married.
Unless Google's image search data was included...
The answer is quite simple: divergence
As we know, by 2001, everybody had an internet connection. "Sex," "porno," "boobies": common enough search terms for green-horns. But now, after two full years of ravenous pornography consumption, your average internaut has found his dream girl...
...be it a hot, cling-wrapped asian chick or a mature bored housewife covered in whipped cream. A hairy Byelorussian farmgirl or a boodylicious urban Black woman.
If Mr. Joe Internaut still hasn't found his kink, then he isn't using the right parameters.
God bless the Internet,
Dr. Cody
That's just nuts.
Why on earth would you think Janet Jackson has any more of an "in" with Diebold, et al, than Kerry does?
--MarkusQ
Popular Men :france, china, india, iraq, iran ;-)
Popular Consumer Electronics
Popular Women
Popular Television Shows
Popular Tech Stuff
Popular Consumer Brand Names
Popular Country Queries
Popular Sports Topics
Top Public Figures: george w bush, janet jackson, john kerry, britney spears, saddam hussein
Popular News Outlets
Top Company Queries: sco
Top Clothing Queries bikini, mini skirt, prom dresses, lingerie, little, black dress, poncho.... Sounds like a populair here to me.
Top Hotel Chains: holiday inn
Popular Health Services: doctor, hospital... who doesn`t love hospitals?
How *very* telling of these times indeed, seems it not the google users who get to decide who and what are populair and who and what are just what everyone is looking for.
Two questions come to mind...
:-p
1) How come mp3 is only #3 on the list of tech searches, when it's the only item from that list on the general list?
2) Do that many people REALLY need to use Google to find ebay or amazon?
Twenties Retirement
Now we know where the DNC went awry. The public wants titties for president! Kinda sad.
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
Marketing executives actually take that sort of thing into account.
don't mean to be a troll, but although they're relatively
small (yet innovative and profitable) marketshare in the PC space,
it now appears that like their early years in the PC space,
they've finally made it to again number one in the consumer space.
so congratulations and mery christmas apple -- you have proved that
if you just focus on making a great product, they will come.
| Popular Consumer Electronics - 2004
| 1. ipod
| 2. digital camera
| 3. mp3
| 4. xbox
| 5. playstation 2
| 6. portable dvd player
| 7. plasma tv
| 8. digital camcorder
| 9. pda
| 10. electric scooter
regards,
j.
don't mod me down, i'm just an occasional troll.
and this has got to be more interesting than all the jabber
about some ditzy chick called 'spears' (or something like that).
The technology behind Google's great results
As a Google user, you're familiar with the speed and accuracy of a Google search. How exactly does Google manage to find the right results for every query as quickly as it does? The heart of Google's search technology is PigeonRank(TM), a system for ranking web pages developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University.
Building upon the breakthrough work of B. F. Skinner, Page and Brin reasoned that low cost pigeon clusters (PCs) could be used to compute the relative value of web pages faster than human editors or machine-based algorithms. And while Google has dozens of engineers working to improve every aspect of our service on a daily basis, PigeonRank continues to provide the basis for all of our web search tools.
Why Google's patented PigeonRank(TM) works so well
PigeonRank's success relies primarily on the superior trainability of the domestic pigeon (Columba livia) and its unique capacity to recognize objects regardless of spatial orientation. The common gray pigeon can easily distinguish among items displaying only the minutest differences, an ability that enables it to select relevant web sites from among thousands of similar pages.
By collecting flocks of pigeons in dense clusters, Google is able to process search queries at speeds superior to traditional search engines, which typically rely on birds of prey, brooding hens or slow-moving waterfowl to do their relevance rankings.
When a search query is submitted to Google, it is routed to a data coop where monitors flash result pages at blazing speeds. When a relevant result is observed by one of the pigeons in the cluster, it strikes a rubber-coated steel bar with its beak, which assigns the page a PigeonRank value of one. For each peck, the PigeonRank increases. Those pages receiving the most pecks, are returned at the top of the user's results page with the other results displayed in pecking order.
Integrity
Google's pigeon-driven methods make tampering with our results extremely difficult. While some unscrupulous websites have tried to boost their ranking by including images on their pages of bread crumbs, bird seed and parrots posing seductively in resplendent plumage, Google's PigeonRank technology cannot be deceived by these techniques. A Google search is an easy, honest and objective way to find high-quality websites with information relevant to your search.
Data
PigeonRank Frequently Asked Questions
How was PigeonRank developed?
The ease of training pigeons was documented early in the annals of science and fully explored by noted psychologist B.F. Skinner, who demonstrated that with only minor incentives, pigeons could be trained to execute complex tasks such as playing ping pong, piloting bombs or revising the Abatements, Credits and Refunds section of the national tax code.
Brin and Page were the first to recognize that this adaptability could be harnessed through massively parallel pecking to solve complex problems, such as ordering large datasets or ordering pizza for large groups of engineers. Page and Brin experimented with numerous avian motivators before settling on a combination of linseed and flax (lin/ax) that not only offered superior performance, but could be gathered at no cost from nearby open space preserves. This open space lin/ax powers Google's operations to this day, and a visit to the data coop reveals pigeons happily pecking away at lin/ax kernels and seeds.
What are the challenges of operating so many pigeon clusters (PCs)?
Pigeons naturally operate in dense populations, as anyone holding a pack of peanuts in an urban plaza is aware. This compactability enables Google to pack enormous numbers of processors into small spaces, with rack after rack stacked up in our data coops. While this is optimal from the standpoint of space conservation and pigeon contentment, it does create issues during molting season, when large fans must be brought in to
Slashdot you mean. "IE usage down 0.5% this year!" "Mac usage up 0.1%!" "BSD Dying!"
I wonder if the report includes the number of links removed from Google under DMCA and the number of people searching for items that would have brought these links...
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Then there's the rules for Brockian Ultra-Cricket as explained here.
* Rule One: Grow at least three extra legs. You won't need them, but it keeps the crowds amused.
* Rule Two: Find one extremely good Brockian Ultra Cricket player. Clone him off a few times. This saves an enormous amount of tedious selection and training.
* Rule Three: Put your team and the opposing team in a large field and build a high wall around them. The reason for this is that, though the game is a major spectator sport, the frustration experienced by the audience at not actually being able to see what's going on leads them to imagine that it's a lot more exciting than it really is. A crowd that has just watched a rather humdrum game experiences far less life affirmation than a crowd that believes it has just missed the most dramatic event in sporting history.
* Rule Four: Throw lots of assorted items of sporting equipment over the wall for the players. Anything will do - cricket bats, basecube bats, tennis racquets, skis, anything you can get a good swing with.
* Rule Five: The players should now lay about themselves for all they are worth with whatever they find to hand. Whenever a player scored a "hit" on another player, he should immediately run away as fast as he can and apologize from a safe distance. Apologies should be concise, sincere, and, for maximum clarity and points, delivered through a megaphone.
* Rule Six: The winning team shall be the first team that wins.
What IS this world coming to? Lunix is far more important than some cheesepop queen. Then again, Lunix users seem to ACT like cheesepop queenth...
Talk about a glaring oversight... what's missing from that list? Not on the top 10, not the top 10 tech, not the top 5 brands, not anywhere, not mentioned once...
Does anyone other than me find it unlikely that Google themselves would be *nowhere* on those lists? That seems very strange... and unlikely.
the top news queries are cnn and bbc... hard addresses to remember.
I can see the case, but still not where Google would come into play - did you do a Google search to find the hospital you are using? Or were you referred there by a doctor?
And in such a case a hospital specific search might be used, not the generic word "hospital" (though perhaps the singular word is also culled from any search containing it).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
PRESbyteriAn!
-- thinkyhead software and media
PRESbyteriAnS!
-- thinkyhead software and media
I hadn't thought of that, I was only considering the news angle. YuCK
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
I don't like the name Bob.
How do you feel about JerkBoB?
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Unless it's down, or slow, or fails to POST!
Did someone pay them not to show
Mozilla browsers was on the increase
and also the Linux Platform?