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Google Zeitgeist '05
Garett Rogers writes "Google has just released their Google Zeitgeist 2005. From the site: 'It turns out that looking at the aggregation of billions of search queries people type into Google reveals something about our curiosity, our thirst for news, and perhaps even our desires. Considering all that has occurred in 2005, we thought it would be interesting to study just a few of the significant events, and names that make this a memorable year. (We'll leave it to the historians to determine which ones are lasting and which ephemeral.) We hope you enjoy this selective view of our collective year.'"
Am I missing something? What is Janet Jackson doing at the top of the search list?
Those who anthropomorphize science and/or nature already believe in an intelligent designer.
Position 1 could be orders of magnitude more searched for than position 2.
On the other hand, position 1000 could have nearly as many searches as position 10...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
What are all the fluctuations in the graph? It is especially noticeable for Wikipedia. It looks like there are about 52 peaks per year. I wonder if there is more traffic to Google on weekends or during the week?
my hero!
porn?? that's should top the list...i search for that hundreds of thousands of times a day, i don't think i'm alone...i think this is RIGGED!!!
Bravo, sir, well played.
Firefox isn't there at all! What about the release of Firefox 1.5?
Who-knew-most-any-of-this? dept. would be better.
13. Any legal action is absolutly excluded. (Pi World Ranking List rules)
I think they forgot Star_Wars_Bootleg.torrent...
I bet some of the terms will stay in the top 10 because idiots like me didn't know what baidu, Ares and orkut meant and looked them up on Google.
commence flame war...
End transmission.
Steve Ballmer's top search: 1. Chair Aerodynamics
Slightly OT, but does anyone have any hard information about what Google does with the personal information it acquires? It could easily associate a particular IP with a list of queries over time, information that could be accessed years, perhaps decades into the future to see a particular person's interests.
It wouldn't be hard to tie the IP to a particular person after all. All it would take would be a GMail account.
There should be some concern about what Google is doing with all this information. Storage is dirt cheap and only getting cheaper. It probably costs them next to nothing to continually compile this sort of information.
"As a company that tries to do no evil, we were quite pleased to see that [the force] outdraws [the dark side] in search queries."
So when will we see them admit that people are searching for [block banner ads] when they annoy people with graphical Google Ads?
And why the @*^!! is the browser useragent info and platform info still missing? "Do no evil"? I think it was wrong to pull that info out of the results. C'mon guys! Put it back!
i am a soviet space shuttle
Bah I've got karma to burn, do your worst, but ... LOOK at all the apple products on that list! 5 in total! Sure they're all ipod related (even itunes) but to me that's pretty cool. Unless you're still adament about not getting an ipod because somehow OGG is better for your precious ears ;) ....
-- (Score:i , Imaginary)
How in the hell is Janet Jackson the top search? I understand everyone wants to see her nipple but that was in 2004... the begining of 2004 (February 1, 2004). Get over it.
I could understand Micheal Jackson for his strangeness. The man is like a walking car accident, we have to look. But the top search being Janet is insane.
The Internet is the Holy Grail of nudity, searching for one womans half covered nipple is really cuddling the complex nature of Googles Algorithm. Make your searches interesting, like "Bea Arthur humping a Camel" or "Shannon Doherty doing coke off a dead hookers butt" Make the people at Google work.
Oh the irony.
Am I the only one here to find the huge mean reversion on most data series very surprising if not doubtful? Take a look at wikipedia. Sure there are cycles created by week-ends for example, but I have a hard time believing they account for so much movement.
\u262D = \u5350
I want to see a listing of keyword searches for:
Google
Yahoo
MSN Search
A9
Clusty
Teoma
...I wonder how many people type in "Google" in the Google search box.
Damn. Only a few comments into the thread and we've already Godwin'd it.
In the Top 10 Froogle searches comes the truth that any nerd has faced: the computer desk, or lack thereof.
How many gamers have complained about the desk they use? How many are using table tops and other various replacements? How about the lack of space?
When will someone make a good computer desk for gamers!
On the "How Do You Take Your Star Wars?" section, they just compare DVD vs film and video game. It would be interesting how are the results of "star wars torrent" hehe, I guess those hits where quite higher
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
I think we should start a distributed computing project to get weird searches on next years list. Stuff like "How do I join al qaeda" or "What is 1+1" or "HEIRHENO#*(_#()*_#". It would be interesting to see how many searches would need to be done to take down the searches.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I must be the most unnormal (my new word for the day) person around. I didn't searced for any of those terms in 2005. I don't even know what Ares and Baidu are? Where's Britney in that list anyway. I thought there was some sort of rule that said she always had to win?
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Apparently even the mighty Google couldn't find these things.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
I have not use any of those searches this year. I goto wikipedia, but never use google to get there. Im actually glad none of my searches ended up on the list.
yes. post on a topic like google zeitgeist when you could be protesting against the unconstitutional power grab by the president. fuck you.
You must be new here...
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I'd never even heard of Orkut until I read that. It's like a Google version of Myspace, I think.
We'll know things have turned around when instead of "Janet Jackson" the top searches include "25th Amendment" and "impeachment."
"Results 1 - 10 of about 540 for Shannon Doherty doing coke off a dead hookers butt"
"Results 1 - 10 of about 303 for Bea Arthur humping a Camel."
and for variety.
"Results 1 - 10 of about 258 for Bea Arthur and Shannen Doherty off a dead hooker camel's butt."
I can't believe Apple got four of the top ten spots on Froogle with the iPod, iPod mini, iPod shuffle, and iPod nano. That's unbelievable.
The Rise and Fall of Online Community
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.
"The advanced societies of the future will be driven by competing systems of psychopathology." -JG Ballard
Has anyone noticed that when you roll your mouse over any and all of the graphs, the tooltip reads "Harry Potter" ? Harry Potter really is taking over the world one goo-graph at a time.
.. for us webdevs is missing again (for a second or third year) - the browser stats :((
also I see less and less in each issue of the Zeitgeist (I suppose as they figure out that more and more of the info is pretty valuable to be released for free)
Is a peak on one of those graphs dozens of searchs or millions?
I know google is just being nice in showing this data at all.
Does anyone know;
Are the numbers available for free or for a fee?
Are they considered a trade secret?
Normally graphs have a scale on them... on both axes.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
All (ok, 99% of) the displayed charts have a 0 dip around April time (just around the time of the popes death)
Did anyone else notice this and wonder just what happened at the data centre that day?
liqbase
Is it a mistake in the legend, or is there some other force at work?
Look at the StarWars Movie vs DVD search. The DVD peakes when the movie is released and vice-versa.
Now look at Harry Potter right after it. The peaks coincide with their respective releases.
I'm guessing the chart is just messed...which is really too bad, because I thought the reversal was more interesting.
--Welcome to the Realm of the Hawke--
Too bad they don't show OS and Browser stats like the good all days.
The big winners appear to be the Jackson family and Apple music players. What a curious and informed society we live in.
I must be under a rock. Feel a bit silly seeing yearly archives from 2001! Still, I think it's rather cool, to be honest. I'm far from a maths geek (used to manage production on maths textbooks and online thingies, though), but stats are fun to play with and they've done an amusing job with their end of year wrap up. Yes, it's a wee bit self-congratulatory and so on ... but ... hey, it IS interesting to tease out meaning (or is that "meaning") from some raw data.
I was surprised to see that nothing in the top ten is politics related (although we don't really know how many of the hurricane katrina searches were politic related.) Nothing about Bush or his administration, nothing about the war in Iraq. I think Brad Pitt at #5 probably says a lot about the state of popular culture.
I'd be interested in seeing the searches for different age groups, and the total number by age group, sex, etc... That would make for some interesting analysis of common stereotypes.
On the Froogle side of things, it's interesting how Apple owns most of the top keywords. What does this say about the age of Froogle users and how technology users use the internet to shop for more technology?
Google News - Top Searches in 2005 ... WORLDWIDE ALL CATEGORIES
:-(
1. Janet Jackson
2. Hurricane Katrina
3. tsunami
4. xbox 360
5. Brad Pitt
6. Michael Jackson
7. American Idol
8. Britney Spears
9. Angelina Jolie
10. Harry Potter
2, 3 is understandable but the rest...
What a fucking disgrace to humanity
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Sorry but I was just looking at the stats just now and... well doesn't anyone else find this spooky (or is it just cuz I'm listening to spooky movie music right now).
It's as if Google scanned our collective brains and published the results in a tidy stats graph.
We are what we search after all, especially with out increasing dependency of on-line.
As technology progresses and we become more and more dependent on it, I expect it to become even spookier (especially with spooky music in the bg), like someone printing graphs of our feelings and personal lives.
Could be that both katrina and tsunami where shown ad nasium on the news, complete with nearly accurate discriptions? while Janet Jacksons Boobie was not shown on the news.
Humanity is fine, your ability to look at a subject logical before coming to a conclusion is what you should be worried about.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
... how much that looks like a Microsoft web page.
Oh no... Microoooogle?!
I think it's amusing that the ALT tag on each image is either 'Harry Potter' or 'Star Wars', no matter what the chart is for.
I wonder which page they did first?
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
I must be boring. Or at least very out of touch with popular culture. Throughout the entire zeitgeist '05 site, there were only 3 terms I searched for in 2005: wikipedia, BBC, and Pope John Paul II.
Free MacMini
What happened? A drop in searches can been seen in many of the examples, especially London, Surfing, and Wikipedia?
google.com is immune to the slashdot effect. I can RTFA even with the story at the top of the summary page.
That's interesting. I like how they took the time to do some timeline graphs.
[%] Cingular Ringtones
Didn't this usually have O.S. and Browser information as well (i.e. google visited by xyz o.s. most, etc, etc)? I don't see it on there.
Am I the only one who thinks their new zeitgeist page looks frighteningly similar to something Microsoft would have designed?
Dog is my co-pilot.
Nothing about Bush or his administration :)
Well there under the World Afairs for the presidential campain. The Administrations Propaganda Machine doing overtime
Hats off to you, Apple. 4 of 10 froogle searches were for an ipod of sorts. This could also mean they are overpriced or hard to find deals on also.
IMAGE VERIFICATION IS EVIL!
The people that read through my Google search history are really going to wonder why those two phrases appear together on an otherwise innocent, idle Tuesday afternoon.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
sub-category of 'The force'.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The graphs are cool. They show the spikes in queries relative to themselves or to what ever the query is being compared to in the graph. They should of shown the number of queries too. For instance, I cant compare Hurricane Katrina to the Pope because they are in seperate graphs with no numbers.
you don't need to keep looking for it?
Sheesh.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Some of those graphs seem to have interesting periodic structure to them. Some of that is probably an artifact of how they binned their histograms for display purposes. Nevertheless, I'd still love to see a Fourier power spectrum. I'm sure you'd see a strong one-day cycle along with various other expected and unexpected periodicities. Seems like there is a lot to learn from such data. Harry Seldon would be proud...
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
The #9 top gainer is protesting against the unconstitutional powergrab by the President...
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Holy crap, a geek from the CofC! I was interested in taking some courses there while I've still got Tuition Assist through the Navy. How is the CS program?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This looks weird. Ok, so Luke Skywalker's dad is Darth Vader, hence his Skywalker last name - but Google says:
:)
"As a company that tries to do no evil, we were quite pleased to see that [the force] outdraws [the dark side] in search queries."
And then "Skywalker" is represented by one of the colors, "Yoda" the other one. Yoda seems to win, according to the graphs.
I'm not a Star Wars fanboy or anything, but wouldn't you assume people were looking for Luke "I'm on the good side" Skywalker, and not his dad? As I see it, the "do no evil" company has a win-win situation in this graph! Where's the dark side searches?
(Oh, and this comment contains spoilers. Please don't read it if you haven't seen the Star Wars movies yet. It would spoil the ending completely.)
www.freshpilot.com
Why are the ALT tags for the chart images "Harry Potter?" Am I missing some inside joke?
Here's the text of...oh, nevermind.
On that note, the graphs tracking the popularity of certain searches over time lacked numbers on the Y axes, making it impossible to compare them to one another... which would have been interesting....
That's pretty impressive.
I'm not sure what would explain this, but just about every single one of the graphs exhibited this almost mechanical jagginess for search popularity (during the 'normal' demand levels, not considering the short-period popularity spikes). I wonder if the local maximums correspond with weakly peak-periods, and the local minimums represent non-peak periods of the week. It's the only thing I could come up with for the almost identical jagginess of all searches.
Would be interesting to find the real reason.
the ipod, ipod mini, ipod shuffle, ipod nano take 4 places in the top 10 froogle searches
London Bombings, WMD, Passage of Pope, CIA Leaks and Rosa Parks...
What a narrow view of the world!!
It wasn't the superbowl incident. There was some leaked fully nude sunbathing footage of her that is probably the prime contributor. It was well covered on most news outlets so I'm not surprised.
Now this story, like the last ones posted from Zonk, are going to get duped by CmdrTaco
"Hello 911? I just tried to toast some bread, and the toaster grew an arm and stabbed me in the face!"
I remember him talking about his third eye being squeegeed clean after a bout of mushrooms. I feel like we are clearly in need of such an action again.
He would be so sad...
Invoicing, Time Tracking, Reporting
The World Affairs section shows that searchers have given up looking for Weapons of Mass Destruction on Google - is that because there aren't any?
the lazarus corporation
Blogpulse makes similar little graphs based its blog database. The data is taken from blog entries not search info. (I'm somewhat on topic... right? Look over there! Cool graphs!) The lastest trends in the blogosphere are listed in Blogpulse's Featured Trends.
Here are some of Google's Zeitgeist examples in Blogpulse for the last 6 months:
Libby vs. Rove vs. Plame
Katrina vs. Rita
Skywalker vs. Yoda
I would love to see some web browser stats. Screen size would be a great one to see. Browser percentage would be the next.
The above is not worth reading.
Everyone knows that the top searches list of google is more like:
- TITS
- Cocks
- LARGE
- HOT
- Why do i have a virus in my winbox?
NO SIG
So Apple takes 4 out of 10 on the Froogle-list.
.sig is the short tail.]
Surely they have to introduce the iPod-media center or iPod-Mac or some such thing in 2006? The iPod brand must be worth more than the Mac brand now/soon.
Froogle - Top Searches in 2005
1. ipod
2. digital camera
3. mp3 player
4. ipod mini
5. psp
6. laptop
7. xbox
8. ipod shuffle
9. computer desk
10. ipod nano
[This
This
.... I wonder what their computers were sitting on when they Froogled that one!
Within a short time, the College of Cardinals elected his successor, John Cardinal Ratzinger of Germany.
Did you mean: Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger?
Spelling flames aside, I'd like to know some absolute numbers. How many queries were there exactly? The diagrams all look the same, one or two peaks at some point.
These are a little more representative of our human psychological frame of mind:
1. Janet Jackson titties
2. Hurricane Katrina titties
3. tsunami titties
4. xbox 360 titties
5. Brad Pitt titties
6. Michael Jackson titties
7. American Idol titties
8. Britney Spears titties
9. Angelina Jolie titties
10. Harry Potter titties
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
"Sorry, Metaspy returned no results at this time."
Indeed! Well played, in fact. Kudos, and kudos again.
It's all porn: infoporn!
infoporn:
information and statistics arranged with seducing graphs, charts, and other eyecandy
this comment is provided "as is" and without any express or implied legibility or congruity [...]
End of the year crap that starts before the year is over.
http://www.realmeme.com/Main/miner/other/workDejan ews.png
I've never had any interest in any of "Google.com - Top Gainers of 2005"
.. and how the -;ll could possibly all nerds scattered around positively make a constructive community then fully be part of the society for the time being?
I've never ever searched anything even close to any of "Google News - Top Searches in 2005"
What's Froogle?
Other than this, about
-World Affairs
-Nature
-Movies
-Celebrities
-Phenomena
I don't really have any faintest idea on what they are talking about.
Even in the "Zeitgest home" I see nothing I have any concern about.
My most used terms in the last 4 hours where 'vi' 'noodles' and 'tc' .
That said:
Aren't they forgetting something there?
and next, anyways:
What's wrong with people?
I mean.. what's wrong with me?
Ok, I got "the concept of group" in my cv: What's wrong with us?
http://malfeasance.50megs.com/
This is clearly a flamebait.. but because it mentions Apple, its informative!
Google notes: enjoy this selective view of our collective year. Google sure collected! For me, the tip-off was the "ipod" searches. Ipod has got to be one of the most overhyped and overrated products in American history... and of great interest to Google? I wonder.
I think you were right the first time. People touch themselves at night, not at work...
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
Did anyone else notice, either while the pages were loading or in a text browser, that the alternate text for every graph is Harry Potter? I guess someone at Google did some copying and pasting without checking over what they wrote.
In years past the Zeitgeist included far more information and far less fluff.
Where's the low-down by country? Where's the scale that allows us to relate the
various graphs?
You could do much, much more interesting stuff using the Alexa data. I hope someone does. There must be a mountain of dissertations to be mined in there, not to mention new business models.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
Mod parent up
I noticed that even before the political stories broke there was a surge in searches. This would be a good tool to predict when the next big political scandel will break and who will be involved. I wonder if google could be used to predict finacial trends.
Star Wars Good vs. Evil?
As a company that tries to do no evil, we were quite pleased to see that [the force] outdraws [the dark side] in search queries.
Why does yahoo do this
am i the only one who thinks we live in a culture that finds a movie that makes 25 million to be unsuccessful? i play traditional irish music, and let me tell you this much, if some people recognize someones name, then you've hit it big. never mind hear that person play. millions of people have heard of the movie, and obviously many people enjoyed it. why isnt that enough?
Let's make the world's first Zeitgeist bomb.
I propose all Slashdotters search for "Google sucks" at least once a day until the next Zeitgeist. In the next Zeitgeist we should easilly be in the top 10
Click here, you know you want to.
Jeremy Butler
www.ScreenSite.org
www.TVCrit.com
and I'm not buying from iTunes, because I don't want to help promote DRM. Go ahead you stupid fuck and help box us all in for the future. Then again, freedom doesn't matter as long as you can get shiny, now does it?
The list quoted for google is the top gainers, rather than top searches. Something makes me suspect the actual top searches list isn't quite family-safe....
And where is queries about browsers? And what about communicators? Google Talk Skype and other! This year Zeitgeist is useless!
Firefox does show up in the monthly reports below. It's popular in Germany and Finland.
t geist-aug05.html
t geist-jul05.html
t geist-jun05.html
t geist-apr05.html
t geist-mar05.html
t geist-feb05.html
t geist-jan05.html
http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist/zei
http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist/zei
http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist/zei
http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist/zei
http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist/zei
http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist/zei
http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist/zei