Google Zeitgeist 2008

bahstid writes "As the year comes to a close, it's time to look at the big events, memorable moments and emerging trends that captivated us in 2008. As it happens, studying the aggregation of the billions of search queries that people type into the Google search box gives us a glimpse into the zeitgeist — the spirit of the times. While the global aggregated results are what one might expect, the breakdown by country is filled with 'hotmail,' 'yahoo' and 'facebook,' indicating that in 2008 your average user still hasn't quite grasped this address bar thing." This year's focus on the US presidential election and the economic crisis made for some interesting trends. It also seems that many Americans frequently checked their Facebook profile while watching American Idol and wondering who Sarah Palin was.

Comments

to be fair

[PachmanP]

...sometimes it's easier to just go into google than to actually use the address bar. frist psot

Re:to be fair

[Anonymous Coward]

It's easier to go to google which most ppl have as their homepage and type in 'yahoo' (5 characters) than 'www.yahoo.com' (13 characters).

Re:to be fair

[zmjjmz]

Most of the browsers released in 2008 will go to the site automatically if you type the name of the site (i.e. facebook or digg) automatically.

Re:to be fair

[Panspechi]

or type the first letter and the rest of the word shows up, then arrow down and enter... 3 "characters". I love been lazy

Re:to be fair

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, same. Also, it's often easier to add the "wikipedia" to a google search query than to actually search wikipedia.

Re:to be fair

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and it's also easier to go to Google and type in 'putty' (5 characters) then 'www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html' (57 characters).

Re:to be fair

[NinthAgendaDotCom]

Really? Why don't they use the bookmark toolbar? Maybe I'm overestimating the capabilities of the average user, and most people don't customize the browser enough to even add a bookmark?

Re:to be fair

[Hurricane78]

Never heard of keyword search?

To translate a word, I type Ctrl-L and then "dict someword" ENTER.
For Wikipedia I have "wiki sometopic" and "wikie sometopic" for the English Wikipedia.

Oh, I also use Yakuake, and I have a special button on my keyboard for it.
So for when Firefox is not running, I press that button, type "wiki sometopic" or "dict sometopic" and Firefox opens with that search.
Yakuake even automatically retracts when Firefox opens.

I have this for YouTube (yt=, btjunkie (bt), wikipedia (wiki, wikie), dict.leo.org (dict, dico), price comparison (preis), recipes (rezept), urban dictionary (ud), and others. I did not see the front pages of those sites for months or even years.

Re:to be fair

[crow]

Yes, particularly for two reasons:

1) It protects you from typos. If you miss a character, it's immediately obvious before you've helped out a typo squatter.

2) It often gives you options to select certain topics within a given site, allowing you to more easily navigate to the portion of the site you actually want.

Re:to be fair

[Aerynvala]

So very true. I almost never use the Wikipedia search function and when I do, it seems to work only about 50% of the time.

Re:to be fair

[jlarocco]

To translate a word, I type Ctrl-L and then "dict someword" ENTER.
For Wikipedia I have "wiki sometopic" and "wikie sometopic" for the English Wikipedia.

You are nowhere near lazy enough. 'w' => Wikipedia, 'g' => Google search, "gi" => Google image search, 'f' => Flickr, 'd' => dictionary, ...

But yeah, shortcuts or keyword searches are the way to go.

Re:to be fair

[spintriae]

You use Google to find Yahoo? "Yo dawg, I heard you like searching so I put a search engine in your search engine so you can search while you search."

Re:to be fair

[DeadPixels]

Agreed. It's a lot easier for me to hit ctrl+t, tab, enter, and type a site name than it is for me to mouse up to the address bar, select it all, delete it, and retype the address before hitting enter. Plus, Google's a lot more forgiving of typos than the address bar is...

Re:to be fair

[stonedcat]

Sadly my boss still types full site urls into the text input box on google... trying to convince him to use the address bar has repeatedly failed.

Re:to be fair

[Hal_Porter]

Most people arguing on the internet cite wikipedia so democratically they are correct and you are wrong.

Re:to be fair

[jlarocco]

What the fuck? Your reading comprehension is terrible. How the hell do you confuse "I have a shortcut to Wikipedia" with "I think Wikipedia is an authoritative source and use it exclusively when looking for information"? Did I say it was the only search I use? You're just making shit up.

It's so stupid I wouldn't even respond except some dimwit moderated your comment Insightful. WTF?

Re:to be fair

[Gordonjcp]

Firefox does this by... Googling what you typed into the address bar.

Re:to be fair

[pbhj]

As the sibling post said w=wikipedia, d=dictionary.com, etc., ...

But I do use Google sometimes. If I use Konq (which occasionally I need too, but only very occasionally) then ctrl-enter doesn't work to fill in the http://www.domain.com/ around the typed in $domain. It's therefore less clicks+presses to do "gg://$domain" and click the [what is usually the] first listing. YMMV.

If you're a keyboard user then aren't the search and address bars only one tab apart. That would account for a lot of misfires too.

Re:to be fair

[Entropy98]

It's easier to go to google which most ppl have as their homepage and type in 'yahoo' (5 characters) than 'www.yahoo.com' (13 characters).

It is? First, lose the www., it's not needed. Second, considering page load times, I believe it would be faster to type yahoo.com into the address bar and press enter than to search google for yahoo, wait for the page to load, scan the page for the appropriate link, then click on it. Especially considering most people I know who search instead of using the address bar have trouble scanning the results and finding the right one. Far to often these people click on ads and then buy stuff that they can get for free.
--
  IP Addres Finding

Re:to be fair

[rasputin465]

Actually, I've seen worse than this. I was at this bar attached to a hotel in Switzerland and they had a coin-operated Windoze machine. And old American guy (~70s) felt hip enough to surf the tubes, so he put in his coins, and upon login an IE browser window automatically popped up, full screen. My friend and I painfully watched him spend 10 minutes trying to find IE by going to Google and searching for "Internet Explorer". He even tried to download from one site and install it; when that didn't work he had to drag the bartender over and show him how to use this new-fangled device (bartender/IT? quite a CV).

Once he was on, he spent his time checking hotmail and his bank and stock accounts. But he was mindful of the security risks: when he was typing in passwords, he looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching.

Re:to be fair

[j-cloth]

Actually, once you've typed 'putty' into google, there's no need to subsequently type 'www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html'
</nazi>

Re:to be fair

[Anonymous Coward]

Googling for 'hotmail' or 'facebook' is one thing, but looking at the most popular search words overall for Sweden, it seems Swedes are using Google to find Google. Hrm.

Re:to be fair

[kv9]

Agreed. It's a lot easier for me to hit ctrl+t, tab, enter, and type a site name than it is for me to mouse up to the address bar, select it all, delete it, and retype the address before hitting enter.

say hello to ALT+D. works by default in Firefox/IE and possibly other browsers. Opera has some other shortcut for going to the address bar IIRC, which I promptly remapped to ALT+D.

Re:to be fair

[kv9]

1) It protects you from typos. If you miss a character, it's immediately obvious before you've helped out a typo squatter.

I bet that why all germans type "web.de" in Google search.

Re:to be fair

[dotancohen]

Sadly my boss still types full site urls into the text input box on google... trying to convince him to use the address bar has repeatedly failed.

I do the opposite for the mother in law. I don't want her typing in yahooo.com by mistake and getting malware. Google generally won't lead you that far astray.

Re:to be fair

[kv9]

Yes, and it's also easier to go to Google and type in 'putty' (5 characters) then 'www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html' (57 characters).

putty is an application that is burried deep within a website, so it's logical to google it like you'd do with other apps. googling for youtube, facebook login, or stupid shit like that isn't logical. the "easy" argument doesn't stand either, because what's easy is to type "youtube" in the address bar then press CTRL+ENTER. but considering this I can't say I'm that surprised.

Re:to be fair

[dotancohen]

You are nowhere near lazy enough. 'w' => Wikipedia, 'g' => Google search, "gi" => Google image search, 'f' => Flickr, 'd' => dictionary, ...

You are nowhere near lazy enough. "i" => Google image search, FTW!

Re:to be fair

[Kenz0r]

I actually think this contributed to those statistics google released, possibly in a major way.
I barely even bother with the www and the domain anymore.

Re:to be fair

[Metaphorically]

When the kids here want to go to facebook (or more likely runescape) on one of several computers in the house where it's not bookmarked, I've taught them to just google it - using the search box next to the address bar.

This is to prevent typos.

It applies doubly so to the flash game site of the week where neither they nor I am sure of the correct domain name.

Re:to be fair

[shish]

What's even more confusing is the people who use google to find google o_O

Re:to be fair

[JPLemme]

I'd mod you up if I had points, but without points I can only say "Good idea!"

Thanks.

Re:to be fair

[guruevi]

Putty is at putty.be ;-)

Re:to be fair

[lyml]

You do realize that even if everyone were to magically become a billion times smarter the scale would be exactly the same.

IQ is defined as normally distributed.

Re:to be fair

[Ed Avis]

This assumes there is even a difference between the address bar and the search box, which is not the case for Google Chrome, and barely the case for other browsers (since they will do a search when you enter a non-URI into the address bar).

Perhaps we will get closer once more to Tim B-L's original web browser, where URIs were considered implementation details and not shown to the user. If the desktop's clipboard supports a 'URI' data type (falling back to just text for apps that don't understand it) then you could just highlight a 'link' object and paste it into your mail client or instant messaging program. Less error-prone to do that than to highlight all of the text.

Re:to be fair

[brauchief]

for real, if i had a penny for everytime i was too lazy to add .whatever" in the address bar when i could put part of the sites name in the search bar and click...

Re:to be fair

[rubah]

I make fun of my friend regularly for googling things that are in his search bar search engines list.

he also googled google maps.

Re:to be fair

[Luthair]

For a little while I did tech support for a company and we'd constantly get calls by people who would search for the URL. They would then select one of the advertising links from other companies and complain that "your site has lots of pop ups".

Re:to be fair

[Luthair]

You can also use CTRL+Enter to skip Google and proceed to XXXX.com

Re:to be fair

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, maybe they could learn how to watch the screen when they type, and use the backspace key if they make a mistake.

Naw, better to save the children than to let them learn.

Re:to be fair

[Anonymous Coward]

Testing on my (newly installed on this computer) Opera browser it appears that your remapping was unnessecary. Alt-D already takes me to the address bar.

Re:to be fair

[marafa]

hear hear
however, you just lost all your laziness bonus points by putting in the full url even tho it was a copy and paste operation ;)

Re:to be fair

[marafa]

umm .. dude .. thats goo....
oh never mind

Re:to be fair

[alexandreracine]

You'll break the Internet! Don't do it!

Re:to be fair

[SuperElectric]

Fair enough, but that doesn't explain the baffling hordes who type "google" into the google search bar (see Australia, Canada, Germany, India, more).

Re:to be fair

[lavardo]

i'm sure that works easier with peepz with only one arm, also.

Re:to be fair

[lavardo]

Or..."someone put a virus on my computer!!!"

Re:to be fair

[FLEB]

Nonono... Google gets the penny.

Re:to be fair

[FLEB]

he also googled google maps.

Although I haven't done that for Maps, I've often Google-searched even Google's services. For things like "Webmaster tools", or the developer APIs, no immediate URL comes to mind. OTOH, I'll often get by guessing a sub-site (like for a product or service from a parent company) by using (nameofproduct).(company).com, which should-- if the world was right and just-- at least be a redirect to the proper place. It usually works.

Re:to be fair

[ypctx]

...<nazi type=grammar> BEEP!!!
</nazi>

Re:to be fair

[kurzweilfreak]

Fortunately, www.yahooo.com redirects to the proper www.yahoo.com, but you still have a very good point. Cheers.

Re:to be fair

[Provocateur]

Or CTRL-L for location, the whole thing is highlighted for you (Don't hit delete, just start typing the URL). Oh, almost forgot: no mouse involved, FTW!

Re:to be fair

[xgadflyx]

I agree... obviously OP enjoys working harder. Personally, I like to save keystrokes. Why do the whole www.address.com/whatever when chances are your browser opens to google anyway.

Re:to be fair

[JohnnyBGod]

Quadruple X?! Now THAT'S hardcore!

Re:to be fair

[unTrainedUser]

I'll give you the typo forgivement; however F6 is most browsers will automatically focus the address bar (and select all the text, so when you begin typing it will delete what is currently there). F8 for Opera. Some other browsers may have different hotkeys, but F6 seems pretty universal to me. This is easier than your method depending on what you have your broswer do on open new tab (speed dial, blank page, homepage (which may or may not be a search engine)).

What I want to know is, since Firefox will, say, go to yahoo if you just type "yahoo" into the address bar.. if it does this through interally using a search engine, does that count towards how often that word has been searched for? That would mean that searches for yahoo, facebook, etc make a lot more sense.

Re:to be fair

[Anonymous Coward]

F6 doesn't always bring you to the address bar. It depends on what currently has focus. It used to be that F6 toggled between focus on the address bar, page content, and maybe the tab bar, too. Nowadays it will only bring the address bar in focus if the page content has focus. If the searchbar or the tab bar has focus, or if the address bar already has the focus, it will swallow it up. I just tapped F6 20 times and it didn't cycle around to page content or back to the address bar.

I'm also fairly sure F6 doesn't work in IE. This may have changed, but I know Ctrl+L always brings focus to the address bar, even if it already has focus, and I know it works in Firefox, Opera, and IE. Not sure about Safari. It even works in Amaya, which is awful.

Re:to be fair

[Hurricane78]

Tab is the worst excuse for "keyboard support" in a GUI app. It's useless with a thousand links, buttons and form fields in a browser.

I found Ctrl-L (adress bar flield), Ctrl-K (search bar field) and search-as-you-type for html links to be very useful.

Especially because I type very fast. (German NEO layout + Datadesk SmartBoard keyboard. I hope I can buy two DataHands soon. At $600 a piece not a bargain...)

Re:to be fair

[Anonymous Coward]

This only works if your site ends in .com

fast risers

[tregeagle]

Its good to see so many non-english fast risers like, tuenti, wer kennt wen and nasza-klasa. Whatever they are...

Re:fast risers

[BluBrick]

They are all social networking sites. Spanish (tuenti - no translation available from Google), German (Wer-kennt-wen = who knows whom), and Polish(nasza klasa = Our class).

Apparently even foreigners use Google to find Facebook-y, MySpace-y, time-waste-y websites! Whodathunkit?

Re:fast risers

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never heard of Whodathunkit. Any chance they'll beat facebook?

Re:fast risers

[Chrisje]

In other news, Europe just started using Electricity too.

Whodathunkthat?

Hehehehehe... I think if you look around you in the world, no matter what country you're actually from, you'll find that most people on the planet are foreigners.

Re:fast risers

[digitig]

And it's sort of reassuring that a misspelling makes one of the UK top 10s. ("Eaton Mess" should be "Eton Mess")

Can't figure out the address bar?

[orkybash]

Probably more a combination of not remembering the domain extension ("was that wikipedia.com or wikipedia.org?"), combined with getting an annoying squatter 90% of the time if you get it wrong. And yes, I'm aware that in the above example both of them get you to where you need to go

Re:Can't figure out the address bar?

[PreDefined]

Amen. Those of you who delete their history on a regular basis might not realize it but it's far too easy to have made a mistake once and then always have the mistake come up as the first match in the address bar. It's less aggravating to throw it into Google where you can possibly even add some additional context for a subpage.

Re:Can't figure out the address bar?

[oakgrove]

When the mistake drops down, highlight it and press shift+delete.

Re:Can't figure out the address bar?

[orkybash]

Mod parent up! Never would have found this, thanks.

Re:Can't figure out the address bar?

[blurryrunner]

Or just use the arrows to select the entry and hit delete.

br/

Re:Can't figure out the address bar?

[OverlordQ]

Gotta love UI features like this where it doesn't tell you about them.

Re:Can't figure out the address bar?

[Fear the Clam]

Annoying Squatter. What you need when you need it.

And in 2008...

[Anonymous Coward]

...the submitter still hasn't grasped the "I'm feeling lucky" feature in the browser. Typing facebook in the adressbar in Firefox will use Googles "I'm feeling lucky" thing and take you facebook.com

Duh!

Efficient use of built-in features isn't stupid

[orbz]

I'd say nerds haven't grasped it, not average users. Now that you can leave www. and .com off your URLs, why wouldn't you? It saves time, provided it gets you to the right site - which most of these pseudoqueries will.

Re:Efficient use of built-in features isn't stupid

[HiVizDiver]

Please - most of the people in here are still using Lynx (on purpose, just ask them why) to browse teh intartubes...

Re:Efficient use of built-in features isn't stupid

[JohnnyBGod]

Actually, typing 3-6 letters on my keyboard still takes less time than waiting for a connection to Google.

Google should edit their Zeitgeist lists, though

[orbz]

Really, what needs to happen nowadays is that Google should separate those "keywords" that exactly match the top-returned URL... then we'd have a better idea of what people are actually *searching* for, versus what they're just trying to access.

Something to remember our times by.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Thanks Google.

Google Trends

[yotto]

I've been doing a podcast based on the Google Trends, which the Zeitgeist is directly related to, for almost 1.5 years now and I must say, watching the trends weekly (and daily) is an interesting exercise. We actually go through and try to find why things were searched for, and while 90% of the terms are based on TV shows (Predominately Extreme Home Makeover and House), the few that are from other sources (xkcd pops up occasionally, as does Google's ever-changing logo) are where the fun lies. That, and the searches for stuff like "Hot Karl" and "Anal Fissures."

Re:Google Trends

[erlehmann]

So can you explain the great anal fisting surge of 2006 ?

Re:Google Trends

[JohnnyBGod]

It seems to have been all the rage in Prague.

Re:Google Trends

[yotto]

Sadly, no. Detailed information (And the Trends page in it's current incarnation. And, a month later, our show) only goes back to May of last year. However, if I had to guess I'd say it was on Big Brother, American Idol, Punk'd, or Dane Cook said it.

Google

[Qrlx]

is filled with 'hotmail,' 'yahoo' and 'facebook'

My roommate had a good one the other day.

He said, "If you get on YouTube and Google for this video..."

I... knew what he meant.

Re:Google

[aliquis]

It brings back memories of the days when you didn't knew how to spell Google doesn't it? =P

As Bryan Adams would had put it: "Those were the best days of my life!", or maybe not, atleast when it came to googl.. searching.

Re:Google

[ewanm89]

Well, isn't youtube owned by google now??? ;)

"nasza klasa"

[NinthAgendaDotCom]

Ah yes, the distant cousin of Santa Clausa.

The MPAA/RIAA won't be too happy...

[Doug52392]

I see "mp3" and "free movies" several times on that list... gee, sure hope the MPAA and/or the RIAA don't see this list!

Re:The MPAA/RIAA won't be too happy...

[the1337g33k]

why not? it was probably them that did those searches so they had somebody else to scream at and sue. Now the MPAA and RIAA will want to start censoring google, and the sad thing is google would probably let them do it.

Re:Google should edit their Zeitgeist lists, thoug

[FlyingBishop]

Better yet, they could separate out the queries that are coming from Firefox URL bars instead of a search box. Is there any way to tell which is which on Google's end, or do they both use the same protocol? Would the fact that they jump straight to "I'm feeling lucky" be enough, or does the FF URL bar just do exactly what a user would do?

India

[rite_m]

My countrymen are confused. The top ten how-to lists has most people trying to figure out "how to reduce weight" (#1) while some are trying to find "how to gain weight" (#6). Men are trying "to impress a girl" (#9), while women are trying "to get pregnant" (#4).

And everyone else wants to learn to play guitar, learn english, create a website, make money and kiss (in no particular order).

Re:India

[KanSer]

Allow me to alleviate their confusion, I can help with #4!

Re:India

[Kagura]

Congratulations. You're now a pregnant Indian. ;)

Sarah Palin?

[martin-boundary]

I'm not American, you insensitive clod! The first time I heard about Sarah Palin was in a spam email, and I still think Jenna's more talented...

Re:Sarah Palin?

[TFer_Atvar]

It's kind of strange when someone you've met at a barbecue shows up in a spam e-mail.

Re:Sarah Palin?

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't know we had John Madden here on Slashdot!

The real search engine is just for backup

[Animats]

The front-end machines at Google have a set of canned replies for common queries. Most queries to Google are in fact answered by the first front-end machine reached, without invoking the main search engine at all. The size of the front-end cache is considered proprietary, but it's not huge.

Most queries just aren't very original.

Re:The real search engine is just for backup

[Anonymous Coward]

All I can think is:

porn, sex, fu..........

Australia? and Canada?

[banffbug]

How come the #6 most popular search term on google.com.au is "google"?

To delete 3 characters from the address bar? The LAST 3? really??

Canada ranked "google" #6 most popular as well, though with google.ca we're talking about deleting one and adding two letters, come on give us a break.

Re:Fickle Environmentalism

[TFer_Atvar]

Please mod this comment to minus a billion where it belongs.

More than happy to help!

... oops.

The hotmail one makes sense.

[Anonymous Coward]

When I type hotmail into the address bar, it didn't used to take me to the login screen. I always go to google, type in hotmail, and click on it there - then it auto logs in and takes me to my inbox. Much quicker than navigating to it the "proper" way.

Re:The hotmail one makes sense.

[lavardo]

yeah, adding ".com" is so hard.

I search for urls I know...

[GiMP]

On my Android phone, I search for websites with URLs that I know because it is faster & easier. I would never do this on a regular computer, where it would be silly, but for mobile devices I think it is a fine and even preferable thing.

Re:Fickle Environmentalism

[Hal_Porter]

Any results on queries about global warming (er, climate change)? Sorry, the next media panic scheduled is the availability of fresh water.

Studies show that the ice caps are melting too slowly! Hybrid cars must be BANNED to save the planet!

pr0n?

[Anonymous Coward]

where is pr0n?

Why...?

[jez9999]

Why did Google remove (some time ago now I know) the browser and OS stats from their Zeitgeist? I can't think of a site that would have more accurate data than them, yet they removed them. :-( I know that there were bound to be some inaccuracies owing to incorrect browser reporting of these things, but not too many, and I thought the Zeitgeist lost a lot when they removed them.

Re:Why...?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was on the team that does the Zeitgeist back end when this was done. All I know is that a directive came from very high up (which means, at Google, the top), saying it had to go. We still have the info, obviously (for what it's worth Linux is growing steadily and Mac growth is increasing).

Re:Why...?

[pbhj]

Perhaps so they could sell the figures?

How to hack

[Memroid]

#6 item for "How to" -> How to hack

It looks like script-kiddies are on the rise! ... or never went away.

Re:How to hack

[Dragonslicer]

#6 item for "How to" -> How to hack It looks like script-kiddies are on the rise! ... or never went away.

Maybe they were looking for a different hack?

Zeitgeist.

[crhylove]

The REAL Zeitgeist of 2008 was the movie "Zeitgeist". Probably the single best piece of film EVER:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-594683847743189197

Go and educate yourselves people!

Re:Zeitgeist.

[crimson30]

Zeitgeist is pretty awesome indeed.

It lets me know who I shouldn't even bother talking to (because they'll believe anything they hear/see, obviously don't do the research and aren't worth the trouble).

Re:Zeitgeist.

[crhylove]

I don't think your invisible friend wants you trolling for flame wars.

Most of the research I did personally on religion long before I saw the movie corroborates his views almost exactly.

I think the movie "9/11 Mysteries" does a much better job than "Zeitgeist" in regards to section two, however.

As to section three, well, it's pure speculation, tacked on a little poorly at the end, kind of like your "Revelations". Though not done nearly as poorly as old John did those.

But it's good you know who not to talk to and then talk anyway. At least part of your cerebral cortex is still functioning, and you might actually LEARN something somewhere along the way.

Cthulhu is Russia's #1

[Anonymous Coward]

Scroll down to "KTO TAKON"

Funny...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody is interested by sex anymore...

Re:Funny...

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't you heard ? Most slashdotters have finally been laid this year... just to realize there is more entertainment in googling google on google.com

Schmeitgeist already

[Hognoxious]

Zeitgeist Schmeitgeist.

Chuck Norris

[Drencrom]

I think the most shocking result is that Chuck Norris is 9th in the fastest rising list for South Africa wtf??

Re:Google should edit their Zeitgeist lists, thoug

[ewanm89]

I do my google searching through the address bar often too. Only if the I'm feeling lucky fails to give me something useful do I deliberately use the search box. And the great thing is, if there is no clear pagerank leader for search term, it drops to search results anyway.

Some of those are mine

[sootman]

Every time I use anyone's computer that has google as their homepage I invariably google a url or two. I'm used to my own systems, which come up with a blank start page, but google.com has that javascript thing that puts the cursor into the search box.

Address Bar

[Ian Alexander]

I think google's getting higher numbers of searches for well-known services like facebook and hotmail because firefox plugs malformed URLs into google and takes you to the first result. I use this all the time (and it's not related to the awesomebar, I've been using it since 2.0) because I'm lazy and don't feel like typing TLD's sometimes.

bad trend

[Anonymous Coward]

google is setting a bad trend by listing everything in lower case. it is bad for the future of english language treating us like little homies.

Translations

[chefmonkey]

Hmmm... they translate some of them, don't bother with others.

For example, #2 on the Chinese fastest-rising list apparently means "Olympic games opening ceremony"; while #4 translates to "Substandard milk powder list" (at least, by Google's own translation engine). There are other interesting things in there, too, if you run the lists through an autotranslator.

Explanation of the German listings

[Sapphon]

Fastest rising
      1. wer kennt wen -- social networking site (general)
      2. juegos -- no freaking idea (no, I will not google it!)
      3. facebook
      4. schüler vz -- social networking site (schoolkids)
      5. studi vz -- social networking site (students)
      6. jappy -- social networking site (general)
      7. youtube
      8. yasni -- person search engine
      9. obama -- a very tanned man (thanks, Berlusconi!)
    10. euro 2008

Most Popular
      1. ebay
      2. youtube
      3. wetter -- weather
      4. gmx -- E-mail provider
      5. google
      6. video
      7. wikipedia
      8. web.de -- E-mail provider
      9. bild -- German tabloid
    10. telefonbuch -- telephone book

Also, Austria
Fastest rising
      1. teilchenbeschleuniger -- LHC
      2. gina lisa -- contestant on Germany's next top model
      3. peking 2008
      4. euro 08
      5. barack obama
      6. schülerVZ
      7. jÃrg haider -- Austrian right-wing pollie who died in a car crash, drunk off his nut, and was later discovered to be gay.
      8. iphone
      9. heath ledger
    10. wahlkabine -- voting booth

Austrian most popular
      1. youtube
      2. wetter
      3. google
      4. orf -- Austrian TV Station
      5. ebay
      6. wikipedia
      7. herold -- Austrian Yellow Pages
      8. routenplaner -- route planner
      9. immobilien -- houses/property
    10. gmx

I notice that several countries have the term "google" in their top 10 google searches. WTF? Who goes to google and then types in "google"?

Re:Explanation of the German listings

[banffbug]

google.com.au and google.ca both have "google" as #6 most popular. I assume it is to get the american/.com version of google... in the laziest way possible.

Re:Explanation of the German listings

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a link in the corner, but yeah I'd say you're right.

Re:Google should edit their Zeitgeist lists, thoug

[FLEB]

They might be separating out queries. AFAIK, there's a "source=..." or the like attached to Firefox-UI searches, and the language on the Zeitgeist page says "our search team studied the aggregation of billions of search queries people typed in to the Google search box".

Re:Where's Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, this is Microsoft. This is irrelevant. And I didn't need Google for either link.

I'm So Clever!

[Anonymous Coward]

> What's missing are things like Vista, Windows, Office, etc,

Also 'water', probably because everybody knows what it is and
everybody has it.

It's not a laughing matter!

[Nazlfrag]

You can break the internet!

It's also safer

[democrates]

If you mis-type a url in the 'address' bar there may be a pirate site waiting, google saves your butt from these ne'er do wells.

Browser stats in 2008 zeitgeist

[paylett]

Alas with Chrome around I don't think we'll see browser stats on the zeitgeist again for a while.

sexual zeitgeist is still censored

[doom]

Google's zeitgeist doesn't mention any sexual terms, so I guess we've all stopped thinking about sex, eh? They claim that the sexual filter doesn't matter because searches on sexual terms always remain constant and zeitgeist reports only on changes... but there's no way for us to know if this is correct, because we don't get to see the raw information. I'm very skeptical of this myself, because the porn-hounds and sexperts seem to be constantly coming up with new terminology (How are we supposed to know if "pegging" spiked this year?).

In any case, I'd argue that if the top 100 search terms are constant, unchanging, sexual terms, that would definitely change your understanding of the "zeitgeist" (e.g. if Sarah Palin were ranked way below Masumi Max, that changes your impression of what people are thinking about. Or at least improves your impression of their taste).

So where's the "turn off 'safe zeitgeist'" setting?

Re:sexual zeitgeist is still censored

[Anonymous Coward]

I completely agree.
I wrote about the strange fact that the word sex does not belong to the most popular queries here.
H

GB and NZ only true geeks??

[Anonymous Coward]

Only the UK and NZ bothered to look for "hadron"....??

Re:GB and NZ only true geeks??

[tehcyder]

Probably just a typo for "hardon" so I wouldn't get too excited...

Amusing

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anyone else find this amusing?

What is...

      1. what is love
      2. what is life
      3. what is java