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."
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.
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.