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.'"

Comments

Fluctuations

[m85476585]

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?

Re:Fluctuations

[CastrTroy]

Yes, if they just took their numbers and plotted a single data point for each week, with the sum, instead of putting a datapoint for each day, it would solve most of their problems. A neat thing that this shows, is that most of the searches are done during the week, when we are working. Does this lead us to believe that people really do spend all their time at work, just browsing the internet?

Re:Fluctuations

[sp0rk173]

It's pseudo-diurnal oscilation. In a time series graph of most natural phenomena you see it. "Day time" behavior differs from "nigh time" behavior, that's all. If it really is about 52 peaks per year, then i would say the "Day time" of google is the weekend and the "night time" is the work week. Of course, to be absoultely sure you'd have to see the units on the x axis.

where is....

[B3AST!]

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!!!

Interesting

[evil agent]

It looks like the BBC consistently gets way more queries than CNN. This might explain the world's perception of the U.S.

commence flame war...

Re:Interesting

[evil agent]

You mean at the whim of the New York Times. Why would the government want to release it now? It overshadowed one of the greatest news stories for them: the successful Iraqi elections.

Here's an idea

[CastrTroy]

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.

ZZZ... Try Metaspy

[Johnboi Waltune]

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.

Missing log day

[LiquidCoooled]

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?

Re:Janet Jackson

[timeOday]

Yup, and with the following list if top "news" searches, we can now conclusively conclude the actual levels of interest in such trifling issues as the war, energy policy, and whether the US is still governed by the rule of law:

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

Re:Something odd about the graphs. . .

[DaveLV]

A lot of people have high speed internet at work even though they don't at home. I'd bet the spikes are related to people browsing at work Monday-Thursday, then people browsing RATHER than working on Friday, then a drop off for Saturday and Sunday.