Google Launches Trends

An anonymous reader writes "Google started to offer a new Trends service that allows viewing search term request statistics split up by geographical locations and languages. In short one can use Google trends to figure out what's hot and what's not and perhaps even find cyclic patterns to pick best time to advertise. From my poking around Google trends I have noticed that there appears to be a general declining bias for most search terms that either has to do with the declining popularity of Google (i.e. less folks were using Google for the past two years) or with the declining amount of searches in general (which is highly unlikely)."

Dumb Pagerank spam.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

I have noticed that there appears to be a general declining bias for most search terms that either has to do with the declining popularity of Google....

Dumb. Maybe he's correct, that google popularity is declining, but the examples he gives do not back up his hypothesis.

There's less searches for Ultramax, Trance music, Madonna and Britney Spears than two years ago. Thats because those items are less popular than two years ago.

Oh, and doing a quick search for the author of this 'blog' (which is starting to look suspiciously like a pagerank pusher), I see he has an ecommerce site called ultramax music, that features trance). [ultramax-music.com]

So - two of his search items are related to what he's selling! An interesting way to get your name, music & company linked from a high profile website.

Re:

[Cinnimod]

I'm going to have to agree with WMF above, the examples that the journalist provided in that article are not general search terms for target audiences. He also didn't provide statistics. The reader has no way of knowing whether the journalist put in 10 search terms of his choosing and all ten showed a decline, or whether he sat there for days and put in a thousand different search terms (which I highly doubt).

For example, in a search for trends on searches for "porn", the trend is UP. Searches for "video ga

Re:

[buswolley]

Interesting. In the United States, there are more searches per capita for Wii, than in Japan. The difference is even greater when searching for the PS3.

Re:

[roskakori]

There's less searches for Ultramax, Trance music, Madonna and Britney Spears than two years ago. Thats because those items are less popular than two years ago.

There are also less searches for Linux [google.com]. Amiga [google.com] has been been increasing recently. Look Mum, I can see a trend! Well, maybe not [google.com].

Re:

[kabz]

Yikes !!!

Check out the searches for C++, SQL, Perl and get a load of that decline, though the main source of queries for all three is Bangalore. Ouch !! Incidentally Dallas and Houston make an appearance in the lower ranks.

On a happier note, I predict news soon, from Peru, of a resurgence in the fortunes of the Amiga. AmigaOS forever !!!

Re:

[glimmy]

my favorite is google, yahoo, and msn [google.com]

Re:

[Stellian]

The IM wars [google.com]
You can see very nicely how each region has chosen a favorite IM network. Being a Romanian myself, I can testify that Yahoo messenger is used much more than anything else.

Re:

[QuantumFTL]

I've been "spamming" slashdot with a link in my sig for a while now... I wonder how much more effective the pagerank spamming in this article would be - does google have some way to filter out sigs from a site?

Also, I emailed the Ultramax guy a while back (I happen to rather like the music and purchased an album of theirs) and he seems to have good intentions with things. I'd prefer this type of spam to Roland P's any day.

Re:

[Eivind]

It's a relative axis. Has to be. They aren't plotting number of searches being for say "PHP", they are plotting *percentage* of all searches that are for "PHP".

I'm betting basically all search-terms have a downward slope -- especially technocrati ones, for the simple reason that the Internet, and Google becomes more and more common among more and more diverse sets of people, so search-terms gets more and more diverse too.

Google LAUNCHED Trends

[Anonymous Coward]

Google launched trends in May [slashdot.org], so this is old news and a dupe. Nonetheless, here's an interesting trend [google.com].

Re:Google LAUNCHED Trends

[JanneM]

Try this search [google.com], just to put that into perspective.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

And to put THAT into perspective, try this tend [google.com].

Re:

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

And to put that INTO perspective - try this search [google.com]

(This can go on all day!)

Re:

[Clazzy]

Even better, put THIS [google.com] into perspective.

Re:

[kerecsen]

And to put sex into perspective (umm.. I guess perspective is the only get you get on slashdot relating to sex), look at this [google.com]. Coincidence? I think not!

Re:

[Rebelgecko]

I win! [google.com].

Re:

[Xemu]

Well, this IS supposed to be a site for stuff that matters, so how about THIS ONE [google.com]

Re:

[kabz]

Web-pages!! Pah!!

Most people are much more interested in the Soft Fruit Rankings [google.com]

Re:

[JanneM]

Here's a term that dwarfs even sex (how's that for popularity?): It's Ultitrend! [google.com]

Re:

[Bruitist]

This one makes me sad... [google.com]

Re:

[Kaetemi]

Nah, you can still get a higher result [google.com]...
Now find something even higher than that :)

Re:

[LihTox]

Oddly enough, yahoo and sex [google.com] are on par with each other.

Re:

[dogmatixpsych]

Or try this one: http://www.google.com/trends?q=porn%2C+youtube%2C+ slashdot%2C+digg&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all [google.com]

Re:

[rm69990]

Or this one [google.com].

Well, at least look on the bright side...

[Xenographic]

Try this search [google.com] to see that Slashdot still maintains its high quality standards :-)

Re:

[RedWizzard]

Nonetheless, here's an interesting trend.

Not as interesting as this one [google.com]. More people are using Google to search for Google than ever before!

Re:

[uuilly]

http://www.google.com/trends?q=goatse%2C+tubgirl&c tab=0&geo=all&date=all/ [google.com]

Reflection

[CMan0]

I think that volume search doesn't necessarily represent traffic volume or popularity. In the end, slashdot has it's crowd, which has established long ago with a very high volume, and digg is much newer. Also, means that /. ppl can remember the URL more easily.

Re:

[rm69990]

As I posted above, according to Alexa, Digg has surpassed Slashdot in the number of unique visitors per day. I would like to know why....Digg is a steaming pile of S***. Bunch of 13 year olds come and ruin it.

Re:

[LordSnooty]

There are more 13-year-olds than geeks?

Re:

[rm69990]

At Digg there are. I'm not sure which they have done more damage to, the comments section or the articles themselves. Some of the articles are just downright dumb, the titles often have more punctuation than letters, the comments consist of "Dupe!!!!", "LOL!!!!" and "OMG!!!!" more than anything insightful, etc etc. I finally gave up on the site after a week yet I've been reading Slashdot for 2 years now. I think Digg and Myspace should merge into a single website, and then MyDigg should just be deleted from

Re:

[Lord Ender]

This is the only trend that really pertains to this article. [google.com]

Re:

[The Cydonian]

I'm particularly amused by the fact that it is Canada, and not the US, that scores the highest for 'slashdot' and 'digg', and that India is in the top ten (didn't know Slashdot was that big in India!).

I would have explained that away by saying that these were results for google searches for /. and not actual hits themselves (meaning, if you were a slashdot regular, you wouldn't have searched for it on google), but the cities list is stumping me; why are all those tech-oriented folks in MIT/ Harvard etc (ie

Re:

[rm69990]

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details? compare_sites=digg.com&range=6m&size=medium&y=r&ur l=slashdot.org [alexa.com]

New trends?

[ShecoDu]

I've used google trends before, is this a new version or just a formal release?

Re:New trends?

[TopShelf]

This is a service of Slashdot Dupes, which periodically "reminds" you of news stories that happened days, weeks, or months ago.

Next on Slashdot: "Microsoft announces Windows ME"...

general declining bias?

[dmoen]

From my poking around Google trends I have noticed that there appears to be a general declining bias for most search terms that either has to do with the declining popularity of Google (i.e. less folks were using Google for the past two years) or with the declining amount of searches in general (which is highly unlikely)."

I ran my own tests, and I think that the "search volume" axis is relative to the total number of searches on each day, rather than an absolute number. Most of my tests didn't show a declining bias, although I saw that in a few cases. I think the "declining bias" you saw might be caused by an increase in the diversity of search terms. Old search terms never go away, but new search terms are constantly being created as new names and catch phrases enter popular culture.

Doug Moen

Re:

[All Your Name Are Be]

Exactly. from the About Google Trends page (the first question, no less):

1. How does Google Trends work?

Google Trends analyzes a portion of Google web searches to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you enter relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time. We then show you a graph with the results -- our search-volume graph -- plotted on a linear scale.

All this means is that people are using a wider range of search terms. (either from new terms entering general

Re:

[zerobeat]

Observe the results for the following search...

http://www.google.com/trends?q=blog%2C+html&ctab=0 &geo=all&date=all [google.com]

Clearly the results follow the trends of popular culture (at least in this computer tech. based example). It is not clear that HTML is searched less often given the results in the url above. All that is shown is that HTML composed a lower proportion of searches requested in mid 2006 than in the beginning of 2004. See http://www.google.com/intl/en/trends/about.html#1 [google.com] for an explanati

Re:

[denoir]

Google describes the values as:

"Google Trends analyzes a portion of Google web searches to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you enter relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time."

The diversification and especially the decline of technical stuff is a rather obvious consequence of a still exponentially increasing number of Internet users. Average people, to be precise - i.e not computer enthusiasts, engineers and scientists. Hence while in absolute terms a techn

hyperlinked 'trends service'

[tod_miller]

seems like only 3 years ago I was saying links of /. should be norel.

then maybe submitter would be mor pleasant with his choice of hyperlink text.

Here is a nice link Google Trends [google.com]

have a nice day.

Oh oh oh. almost forgot, this is about 9 ice ages old. oh ohoh

do a search for

lemon, lime [google.com]

it is by far the best search you can do on trends! awesome!!

rel=nofollow

[tod_miller]

sorry. I am tired.

Holy Nation of Pervs, Batman ...

[mstroeck]

... living in the perpetual darkness of Finlands arctic winter for a few months a year sure can make you lonely, but that lonely [google.com]?

Now we can compare!

[toochoos]

Don't click here: http://www.google.com/trends?q=ubuntu%2Cdebian [google.com]

An Upward Trend for Google

[telchine]

Hmm, I can see an upward trend here [google.com]. However the data they have here [google.com] is very suprising!

Re:

[TheThiefMaster]

To be honest I found this one [google.com] suprising. How many people are searching for "google" in google?

Firefox, Opera, ie

[trip11]

I tried out "Firefox, Opera, IE" and was hoping google would be cool enough that I would get a comparison of trafic from each of the browsers. No such luck. Come on all of you Google employies. One of you needs a 20% time project I'm sure. Put in a fun set of 'easter eggs' that catch browser traffic comparisons or platform traffic comparisons, or other specific comparisons for an appropriate search. I'm sure there are more interesting trends than just 'how many times did you search for x'.

Re:

[rm69990]

This tool can help out advertisers. Your tool wouldn't be able to. Thus, this is a better use of Google's time.

Food for thought...

[WindowsIsForArseWipe]

http://www.google.com/trends?q=bomb+making&ctab=1& geo=all&date=all [google.com]

CowboyNeal's been hoaxed by a marketer

[E-Sabbath]

Indeed, this isn't a new feature, and it certainly looks like someone has an agenda here. Where are people going, if not to google? And the expected trend of any specific query is to decrease over time as popularity wanes.

One Solid Trend

[xoip]

There is no escaping this one...http://www.google.com/trends?q=porn&ctab=0&g eo=all&date=all [google.com]

Re:

[Necroman]

You can see Sony's decline through 2005 when it started being out-searched by porn.

http://www.google.com/trends?q=porn%2C+sony&ctab=0 &geo=all&date=all [google.com]

Re:

[idonthack]

Interesting.

Top ten cities searching for porn:

1. Milton Keynes, United Kingdom
2. Birmingham, United Kingdom
3. Auckland, New Zealand
4. Brisbane, Australia
5. Manchester, United Kingdom
6. Sydney, Australia
7. Melbourne, Australia
8. Irvine, CA, USA
9. Brentford, United Kingdom
10. Miami, FL, USA

Top ten regions:

1. South Africa
2. New Zealand
3. Australia
4. United Kingdom
5. Canada
6. United States
7. India
8. Finland
9. Turkey
10. Denmark

Of course these will be a little skewed due to language differences. But interesting nonetheless.

Re:

[AnFraX]

Even more surprising is this trend [google.com]. It seems the UK tops out as the most perverted English-Speaking nation, aswell.

Re:

[kfg]

#1 American city in porn, St. Louis, located in the "Show Me" state.

KFG

The Microsoft Monopoly

[DittoBox]

http://www.google.com/trends?q=rms%2C+esr%2C+bill+ gates&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all [google.com]

Seasonality

[sveinb]

ice cream, snowboarding

http://www.google.com/trends?q=ice+cream%2C+snowbo arding&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all [google.com]

Old news

[nascarguy27]

According to this Press Release [google.com], Google released Trends on May 10, 2006 along with Google Co-op, Google Desktop 4, and Google Notebook. It appears that the guy who wrote the article just happened to come across Google Trends, put his own website words into it, and IMO he doesn't understand how it works.

Another Scary Trend

[Derosian]

http://www.google.com/trends?q=Japan%2C+Europe%2C+ United+States%2C+China%2C+Canada&ctab=1&geo=all&da te=all [google.com] Whoever knew Canada was so popular?

An even Scarier Trend

[Harmonious Botch]

http://www.google.com/trends?q=france%2C+england%2 C+germany%2C+Canada&ctab=1&geo=all&date=all [google.com]
It's truly scary when you realize why the parent trend looks that way.

Re:An even Scarier Trend

[Harmonious Botch]

But it's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. So many alleged trends are actually propped up by something else.

http://www.google.com/trends?q=france%2C+paris%2C+ %22paris+hilton%22%2C+%22tour+de+france%22&ctab=1& geo=all&date=all [google.com]

Wheat from the chaff?

[scottblascocomposer]

They seem pretty separate to me already!

wheat + chaff [google.com] :)

s/nouns/adjectives and Scary Trend dissappears

[Harmonious Botch]

If you swap adjectives for nouns ( use 'canadian' and 'japanese' etc, instead of 'canada' and 'japan' etc ) then the trend is not there. There is not a trace of it. I think that the trend for the word 'Canada' is a bizarre artifact. If we knew why it was there then we might know a lot more about how google trends relly works - or fails.

http://www.google.com/trends?q=Japanese%2C+Europe a n%2C+American%2C+Chinese%2C+Canadian&ctab=1&geo=al l&date=all [google.com]

Someone call Maslow

[eko33]

Modern culture's hierarchy has changed!

New Maslow [google.com]

/idle speculation

Does not compute

[RLiegh]

From my poking around Google trends I have noticed that there appears to be a general declining bias for most search terms that either has to do with the declining popularity of Google (i.e. less folks were using Google for the past two years) or with the declining amount of searches in general (which is highly unlikely)

It would have to mean that less people are searching, because what else would these mysterious people be using to search with if not google? The browserbar that some spammer hijacked onto th

Re:

[traveller.ct]

Or people were using something other than Google to search. Perhaps Yahoo or MSN?

It did mention "declining popularity of Google" as a possibility.

BlogScope

[lailla123]

There exist many better trendspotting tools, e.g. try BlogScope [blogscope.net]. For example, compare YouTube and Google Video [blogscope.net].

Google Trends comfirms it

[3dWarlord]

NetBSD is dying. [google.com]

Someone please help me

[rbarreira]

Someone please help me analyze this one [google.com].

Re:

[daniil]

You might also want to take a look at this [google.com].

Slashdot vs. Digg

[code65536]

Ouch. :( http://www.google.com/trends?q=slashdot%2C+digg&ct ab=0&geo=all&date=all [google.com]

*likes /. much more than Digg*

Singular v. plural

[scooter.higher]

Now this is interesting:

Man v. Woman
http://www.google.com/trends?q=man%2C+woman&ctab=0 &geo=all&date=all [google.com]

Men v. Women
http://www.google.com/trends?q=men%2C+women&ctab=0 &geo=all&date=all [google.com]

Re:

[coflow]

This [google.com] is a complete surprise to me.....

Re:

[shawb]

Clicky [google.com]. This has to be the most interactive article I've seen. It's turned into a game in several threads.

A simple explanation

[beefstu01]

Well, this is because women travel in packs, thus the singular "woman" doesn't really exist...

Popularity is not popularity

[kirun]

Take, for example, DS vs PSP [google.com]. Any look at sales charts will tell you that the DS is ahead, but PSP is ahead in searches. Unless there's a whole load of Paint Shop Pro fans skewing the results.

Re:

[eipipuz]

You may look at the News chart, just below the search one...

Re:

[rshane]

Perhaps. Maybe you just have to be more specific [google.com].

My research

[DrKyle]

My hypothesis has finally been proven! While geeks [google.com] remain unpopular, pizza [google.com] and lesbians [google.com] are steadily gaining in popularity.

Old news, technically

[raalynthslair]

While this is technically old news - the "beta" has been available to play with for some time now. I remember looking at it to prove a point about "porn searches" to my friend - that US was NOT #1 on the categories WE could think of (only about 4 so I KNOW we missed some)... and being surprised that we were further down than 10th... Arab nations almost empirically held the top places... But the point is, that this has been around now. But, it IS news that something Google has put out IS listed as 'complete

No units, what's the point

[Paul Carver]

How can any x-y graph without units on the y axis be useful? Without units this entire thing is just mental masturbation. You can play around with it if that sort of thing makes you happy, but I can't see any actual value coming out of it because without numbers it's just meaningless pictures.

Re:

[Mad Marlin]

You don't need units to do this one: Star Trek vs. Star Wars [google.com]. Yay for mental masturbation! (mental vs. masturbation [google.com])

Telling stories with lies, damned lies and trends

[new500]

Hmm, okay, so can i prove something with this?

http://www.google.com/trends?q=sex%2C+politicians% 2C+internet%2C+internets%2C+email&ctab=1&geo=all&d ate=all [google.com]

i.e, everyone wants to know where sex can be found, a heck of a lot of people want to know where their email is, a elite minority are looking for that internet that was sent them but never arrived, "internets" clearly remain off the practical radar for now, and no-one cares at all where their politicians are?

I'm beginning to think this is a ma

Evil

[miracle]

"google evil" vs. "satan evil" very interesting!

http://www.google.com/trends?q=google+evil%2C+sata n+evil&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all [google.com]

Re:

[Danimoth]

Any ideas what that spike is?

Look at results for Women, Woman

[PWNT]

http://www.google.com/trends?q=woman&ctab=1&geo=al l&date=all [google.com]
http://www.google.com/trends?q=women&ctab=1&geo=al l&date=all [google.com]

Pretty crazy that Iran and india are the top searchers for those words.

I'm baffled, if they want porn, they should be searching that.

The google results for women/woman yield wikipedia and a bunch of informative sites about womens's health!

Very interesting, also looking at cross country skiing shows Canada has large interest in the sport, and ottawa is the capital

Top searches for 'Google Trends'

[groovelator]

Apparently Turkey, New Zealand and Denmark have the highest number of searches for 'Google Trends'.

So what's that all about?

http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22google+trends%22 &ctab=1&geo=all&date=all/ [google.com]

Re:

[groovelator]

Oops. That link didn't work...

Hope this one does :> http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22google+trends%22 &ctab=1&geo=all&date=all [google.com]

Google Trends use of geolocation

[wired_parrot]

Isn't Google Trends geolocation inherently innacurate? As I understand, it is using your IP address to determine your location, but this only gives you the location of your ISP router, and the two can be different by hundreds of miles. Since ISP routers tend to be located in urban areas, they tend to get a disproportionate amount of traffic. There was an interesting article about the problems with Google Trends [andrewu.co.uk], pointing out how for example the suburbs of Milton Keynes in England are constantly highly ranke

Thank goodness

[junglee_iitk]

I like this comparison. [google.com]

Fixed Summary

[mattwarden]

In short one can use Google trends to figure out what's hot and what's not amongst those Internet users that search on Google and perhaps even find cyclic patterns to pick best time to advertise on Google.

Maybe that sounds picky, but you have to consider the sample before you start making conclusions and generalizations.

Nigel:It really puts perspective on things,though

[xPsi]

David: Too much, there's too much fucking perspective now. [google.com]

Hmm

[sejinh]

Those New Zealanders are horny bastards... http://www.google.com/trends?q=porn&ctab=1&sa=N [google.com]

Some more comparisons..

[StikyPad]

Pepsi beats Coke [google.com]

California beats Florida (and Hawaii) [google.com]

Right beats left [google.com]

MIT > all [google.com]

And apparently, the number of people who say tomato almost exactly matches the number who say tomato, although it varies slightly by city as seen in the chart at the bottom. http://www.google.com/trends?q=tomato%2C+tomato&ct ab=0&geo=all&date=all [google.com]

Re:

[tod_miller]

I hear you man.

fucking douchebag. lets get some mints and shove them in his eyes!

man, dane cook kills me.

Re:

[Pulse_Instance]

Here you go, this [google.com] is much more intresting and easier to compare.

Re:

[shawb]

Exactly [google.com]. Looking at holiday [google.com] related terms is very telling [google.com] Wow... that last one is odd. There's a very telling lack of a peak there... Since july 4th was almost 2 months ago, one would assume that there should be a peak. Either people did not celebrate Independance Day in the US this year, they celebrated in a different way, or google trend's data is at least two months out of date, and therefore useless for trendspotting.

Re:

[fireduck]

Of course it isn't updated with data from yesterday. A cursory glance at the scale of the graph shows that the minor tick marks represent quarters, and there's only 1 tick mark in 2006 showing. Thus, we've got reliable 2006 data through a bit after the first quarter (likely through May and maybe into June). You can clearly see that it's starting to rise at the end, and if we had the data, we'd certainly see the July peak.

And just because it doesn't have the latest data, doesn't invalidate it's use for tr

Re:

[shawb]

So, the data is 2 months out of date. Therefore of very limited utility in predicting actual trends in "internet-time." Granted, it could still be useful for cyclical trends: seasonal, holiday based, back to school/etc in determining periodic demand, but not as useful as "Wow, this thing is about to get really big, and we'd better jump on it NOW." Then again, maybe that's actually a good thing for society... the act of "coolhunting" [wikipedia.org] (I personally hate the word, but that's what I've read it as... trendspo

Re:

[daniil]

http://www.google.com/trends?q=porn [google.com]