Slashdot Mirror
Visualizing Searches Over Time
An anonymous reader writes "Chris Harrison has built a visualization that explores what people are doing online over time. He explains, 'Search engines are the gateway to the internet for most people, and so search queries provide insight into what people are doing and thinking. In order to examine millions of search queries, I built a simple, cyclical, clock-like visualization that displays the top search terms over a 24-hour period.' Interesting to see that the masses online have fairly coherent and consistent search behaviors. He also investigates the notorious AOL dataset."
What I find amusing is the fact that one of the most popular search terms in the AOL data set was "myspace," which he attributes to AOL targeting home users who desire to use the internet for social activities. To me, this indicates that people who use AOL to search do not know the difference between a search box and a URL bar.
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
I have set up systems for people who are very non-technical and they are exactly like that. They want one way to find stuff and having an alternate confuses them terribly. So I set their home page to google and tell them to search for what they want.
And yes, if I had read down a bit further I would have seen him discuss timezones. The web started at CERN, of course.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
If you scroll down that page to where he talks about google and yahoo you'll find that's exactly the case. Apparently, Google is by far the most common AOL search term.
Even back in 1997 they [Europeans] must have accounted for a fair chunk of searches.
Yeah, I'm searching for "more insulting understatements from isolated Americans", right now.
...is to find explanations for the jumps in google trend graphs. This one really got me: http://www.google.com/trends?q=death Explain the sudden rise in 2006. Reason: http://www.google.com/trends?q=death%2C+steve+irwi n%2C+sting+ray&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all
Another interesting thing is that searches including 'fuck' increase during weekends:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=fuck&ctab=0&geo=all &date=2006-10
As much as I hate AOL, I hate misleading summaries too. Search queries ARE NOT PRIVATE. AOL leaking it [or just giving it out] shouldn't be viewed as negative. There is no https://www.google.com/ (it redirects to the http version). No security, no privacy.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I found it interesting that it seems most people type in things like "information about -something- '" into a search engine.
....and if they don't, perhaps they should.
It seems to me to be a somewhat naive way of searching given that many sites don't necessarily spell out that they are giving information about a given subject. It is an oblique reminder of how many people might view the Internet as a formal collection of officially produced, authoritative "Information" instead of the jumble of stuff that it is. Perhaps search engine logic commonly treats the string word "information about" in a special way given people's apparent proclivity to do this.
Regardless, I would drop those words from the data as they don't really help in showing what people are searching for. It's similar to including the word "and"; it conveys little about what people are searching for and more about *how* they are searching.
No sig.