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The Internet

Google Reveals Popular Search Patterns 266

Posted by CmdrTaco from the now-thats-interesting-stuff dept.
danec writes "Google has finally put up a page showing off its popular searches. Called the Google Zeitgeist (meaning: the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era) it will be updated monthly, weekly or even daily as circumstances warrant." This is actually a lot more then just a "Top 10 List" and I hope they update it frequently. I especially like how they compare searches for related words (Aimster/Napster in this edition). It would be fun to do the same for politicians during elections, or movies competing for the same blockbuster release date. You can do fascinating stuff with the amount of data Google has.
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Google Reveals Popular Search Patterns More

Google Reveals Popular Search Patterns

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  • Re:Obvious (o)mission... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Make Slashdot the top Gaining search

    Nah, we need something funnier. Like "Gerbil cleaning and refurbishing services". Everyone click on this link, list it as your home page, and stick it in your sigs:
    http://www.google.com/search?q=Gerbil+cleaning+and +refurbishing+services&sa=Google+Search [google.com]

  • Actually they come from the equally talented and equally non-Japanese mind of Craig McCraken. But I wouldn't be surprised if they used a Japanese/Asian production studio, like many other modern cartoons.

  • I remember watching the "most recent questions" at Ask Jeeves while watching Millionaire at the same time, and (un?)surprisingly, most of those upper level millionaire questions showed up right after they were asked.

  • "Shakespeare" is the 5th most misspelt query.

    If that isn't Ironic, nothing is.
  • "personally, that same checklist adds up to : pig."

    Of course upon reaching the same stereotypical conclusion you have rendered yourself in the same light.

    Vermifax

  • Chances are they *do* store the ip the search came from -- which, if you have a static IP like me, means they *could* tie in what you've searched for over time. Note that AFAIK, there's nowhere on Google where they actually ask for your name, email, etc... - but if they can ID you by IP, that's nearly as good, for targeting purposes. As soon as they have a "survey" or other somesuch where they want your email address, name, etc... they will have all the info they need to build a complete "browsing profile"...

    I'm sure CmdrTaco finds some of this stuff fascinating - and I'm sure there are some neat things that can be pulled form the aggregate data - but I would be more concerned with the privacy implications.
  • It would still be fascinating. Now go outside and play.
  • Direct links from the page sound like a good idea. This would avoid the feedback problem if they did not count toward the totals that make the page.
  • That is very interesting, considering that the vowel used in "look" does not have an equivalent in Spanish. The closest one can get with Spanish vowels is either "loke" (rymes with "Coke"), or "Luke".

    In a similiar vein, Mexicans pronounce the English word "Jeep" the same way Americans do, even though the "j" sound (the "soft g") in "Jeep" does not exist in Spanish.

    - Sam

  • I would have thought that Britney Spears or Cindy Margolis might be on top of the Celebrity queries. I wonder what people want to see about Jenna Bush... The Loana phenomenon is logical tho'

    Another thing that striked me is how Napster is so popular despite it was nailed so hard lately. Upon thinking, the best explanation would be that users are searching for Napster alternatives.

    "Arts" took 22% of the pie chart distribution, only 2% more than "Computers". I am happy to see that I am living in a world with lots of people with artistic tastes.
  • Then how would Stomberg and Strombecker translate?
  • The way I heard it, they each lead to 40 other pop-ups.
  • They call it "Google Zeitgeist", not "Zeitgeist of the entire planet". I'm sure that at some point someone has used the term "American Zeitgeist" and it wasn't too hard to figure out that they weren't talking about Europe or Asia.
  • "...more than the sum of their parts."

    Aren't they the ones who gave us "gestalt"?

  • "Philosophers never could quite agree on a word or phrase that captured the weird sense of nostalgia for the present that seemed to emanate from that word."

    Considering that nostalgia is "A bittersweet longing for things, persons, or situations of the past", I can see where they would have a problem.

  • The first thing I did when I saw that 'audiogalaxy' was one of the rising searches was go search for them and see what I got. I've already seen posts requesting actual links from the zeitgeist entries (presumably to the searches they spawn, and not pre-chosen links).

    It will be interesting to see how these reports drive -- and therefore change -- searching trends if they become popular.

    phil
  • I don't follow. My IP was different yesterday than it is today (cable modem). Yesterday, at 11.22.33.44 I searched for "literacy rates in medieval europe". Today with IP 11.22.33.34 I searched for "websieve".

    Even the most brilliant marketing gonzo will look at that and say big deal.

    I truly don't understand what the conspiracy bits are getting set for. The information is interesting but useless, unless you're doing some kind of zeigeist master's thesis.
  • Google does not traffic specific identifying information. They only collect query information to drive their statistics.

    This is completely different from M$ and .Net which basically OWNS your entire online identity, or Intel with UNIQUE identifying serial numbers on CPU's.

    It is not the amount of data that we should be concerned about, but rather the type of data and its intended use.
  • Lighten up and take it as a compliment. There are a number of German words that succinctly sum up abstract concepts that do not have an English/French/etc counterpart.
  • I like having an account at Slashdot. I like my user ID. I like it when Slashdot says things like:

    Casinos Hit the Data Jackpot [slashdot.org]

    Really Targeted Advertising [slashdot.org]

    You Are What You Click [slashdot.org]

    TiVo usage Info Collected For Sale [slashdot.org]

    But then he said:

    > You can do fascinating stuff with the amount of data Google has.

    My feeble little mind can't handle the inconsistency! Arrrrrrrgh! (pop)
  • Wierd in the extreme. When using Google with IE5.5 all URLs were redirected through their site. Trying again with Netscape on Linux this didn't happen, ditto for other browsers/OSs and other folks installations of IE.

    After clearing out my cache and cookies this behaviour no longer occurs...

    Are Google doing selective logging of some of their users? Frequent users?

    Does anyone else get their links redirected through 'http://www.google.com/url'?

  • Is that of the celebrety queries, I don't KNOW who the top two are.

    I think this says I'm out of touch with the interests of the general web-using population. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing.
  • What about angst? It simply means 'fear' in German, nevertheless I often see it used to describe a movie or a novel, like in 'angst-laden'.

    In German commercials English is often used to appear more cool / funky / sexy / whatever. You will find short phrases or even single words used in English where there are perfect German counterparts. Very often these are phrases that do not make a whole lot of sense or add to a description. English is simply used to appear modern. Maybe people who don't understand English well enough are supposed to be impressed by that, I often find it ridiculous.
  • Nah, Big Brother is interesting if it is either new or if the mix of people is well done. I liked the first season in Germany, the following two were quite boring (didn't really watch the third).
  • I posted this before, I think it's pretty cool...

    Google has some specialty search engines.

    There's a Google Linux Search Engine [google.com] (even a penguin logo)

    There's also a Google BSD Search Engine [google.com] (with daemon) and a Google Apple Mac Search Engine [google.com] (with fruity colors) too.

    Surprisingly absent (or not!?) is a search engine for that other operating system...
  • Actually, I'll bet that with Google's PageRank [google.com] indexing technology, this will hardly be an issue. If these websites have no good content, nobody will link to them and they'll get terrible rankings in Google's index. Of course, who knows what could happen with other search engines...
  • As some others have noted, the reason the borrowing happens is that the single word is shorter and therefore easier to use than the English counterpart. This is one reason why words migrate across languages.

    However, why a word gets used often is another question. From time to time, one of these new concepts surfaces in the popular consciousness and people seem to go out of their way to use the word whenever possible. This is particularly noticeable in the "alternative" press and in movie reviews. Fifteen years ago, there should have been an Oscar category, "Most gratuitous use of the phrase, 'mise en scene'." Ten years ago, it was "zeitgeist". Nowadays, it seems to be "schadenfreude".
  • Bingo. The $1 million question was "On 'The Brady Bunch,' what was Carol Brady's maiden name?" That threw even the most avid TV trivia buffs, and was pretty hard even for a jackpot-level question. Past questions have included "Who invented the helicopter?" and "Which celebrity appeared on Laugh-In?" There was even a question about computer history: "Which insect, found in a 1945 Mark II computer, is considered the first computer 'bug'?"

    Given the length of time people spend thinking about these questions on the show, it's very easy to get on Google and look up the answers. Sometimes, a phone-a-friend lifeline will try to Google the question, resulting in awkward silence as he waits for his results to download.

  • I doubt it. I think it's more likely that most porn searchers are actually so lame they don't know about Google but use whatever comes up when they press "search" on their browsers...

    Most people who are clued in enough to use a decent search engine are also know that searching for porn only leads to javascript traps.

  • It seems that it is not uncommon to have English-named programs in foriegn countries. For some reason, it doesn't work the other way quite as well, though. I can't think of any foreign-titled shows in the U.S.

    Yeah, like those US search engines that never use german names for their statistics...
  • It's really funny to see how popular Loft Story [theloftstory.org] has been. Celebrity #1 : Loana. Nobody hear about her before Loft Story, and she's far from being as cute as Nikkie.
    I can hardly understand why Loft Story has been so popular on Google. Loft Story is only a french TV show, while Big Brother can be watched by far more people (english language) .
    Anyway, Loft Story is over now. The game ended yesterday. Loana and Christophe won. We'll have to wait until 2002 to see Loft Story 2.
    It was the first time something like Big Brother happened in France, and I have to say.... that I really loved it. As a proof, you can check my Loft Story for Unix [claranet.fr] client.
    But I still can't figure out why Big Brother has been beaten in Google's audience.

    -- Pure FTP server [pureftpd.org] - Upgrade your FTP server to something simple and secure.
  • One might expect that google could demand some hefty premiums for such data updated on a daily basis to marketing companies. If they keep it all, there is a huge amount of interesting data mining that could be performed. IP logs, for example, would allow information to be broken down by city/state of origin.

    Analysis of cultural trends could be taken to a more immediate level by comparing the number of queries about a topic to queries about previous culture flashes (e.g. AYB). This could reveal interesting threshold effects.

    This assumes of course that google has sufficient and diverse market share to be accurate.

  • the "universal language" of esperanto, which sucks

    And here we have the ambiguities of English causing me to interpret your sentence as exactly the opposite of what you meant.
    --

  • Exactly. Who are we to question google?
  • "La Femme Nikita" is the only one I can think of. I don't think it lasted long, though.

  • The use of Zeitgeist (I am guessing that is the word you are referring to) goes back at least to English-language translations of Heidegger. Philosophers never could quite agree on a word or phrase that captured the weird sense of nostalgia for the present that seemed to emanate from that word. Spirit of the times just doesn't work. Maybe it's the much stronger association with soul-ghost-death in the German that does the trick.

    There are many somberly connotated German words or phrases in the philosophical/psychoanalytical jargons. Blame Nietzsche, Wagner, and Freud.

  • I have to wonder: for those of us who use Google in Swedish Chef [google.com] mode, were our queries listed under the 1% Swedish, the 1% Other, or the 68% English (especially since switching to the English version is listed as one of the options)?
  • I just *loved* their top misspelled queries

    I noticed that carsdirect bought a keyword (or sponsored link) for "volkswagon" (the misspelling) and even used the misspelled word in the ad! Pretty cool.
  • I wonder if this page [mooresystems.com] will see any benefit from this mission of yours.
  • I find it quite suprising that so many people have searched for Wimbledon since the official site is www.wimbledon.com (and .org). What is less surprising is Le Tour de France since the official site is www.letour.com (and .fr) which is much less obvious.

  • You're right; you could argue that Zeitgeist as used in English just a fifty cent word version of "trend". But I think, we make a distinction between the two in ordinary usage (if one could seriously suggest that anyone uses the word Zeitgeist in ordinary usage).

    A "trend" kind of implies a short-lived idea, maybe spanning 1 1/2 years. When we say Zeitgeist, we often mean something overwhelming for an era or age. So while there was a trend in the early 1980s of wearing skinny ties, red silk suspenders represented a zeitgeist. The ties becoming skinny was simply a response to the wide ties of the 1970s. The red silk suspenders were more than that in that they symbolize the "power color" red (implying that "power" was synonymous with "aggressive"), the unnecessary expense of silk, and the overly-dressed look that requires suspenders -- remember the go-go 80s, "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous", junk bonds, people paying way too much money for works of art, tax cuts for the wealthy, etc? You could summarize it all with red silk suspenders. So while the ties were a trend, the suspenders encompassed something bigger than that.

    In a similar vein, I would argue that Eddie Bauer represents a zeitgeist for the 1990s, because the brand epitomizes the store-bought rugged individualism and pseudo-outdoors lifestyle that was popular: "Eddie Bauer" edition SUVs driving to fast food places, people buying overpriced clothes from Orvis that they would never wear to go hiking or anything, etc.

    So I guess you could say we use (perhaps misuse) the word Zeitgeist to mean an amalgamation of major trends. It's a fine (and perhaps unnecessary) distinction, but hey, that's what marketing is for.


  • suprising that so many people have searched for Wimbledon since the official site is www.wimbledon.com

    Going straight to FOO.com [google.com] is a risky strategy -- it's not at all uncommon to get trapped in a pr0n squatter site. Google is damn good about getting you to the genuinely useful sites, both official and not.

  • Where do they get this information, I wonder? Is it publicly available somewhere? I wouldn't mind looking through that raw file.
  • The definition of how something is spelled, defined, or otherwise reduced to its canonical form is now defined by what Google tells us.

    --
    I read it on the 'net, it must be true.

  • Hell make that a note to everybody, that's why I quickly posted a correction to my first "kidding around" post. Otherwise I'd have been marked as flamebait in minutes. I guess that's the price we pay for moderation though. Truth be told, not everyone is intelligent enough to moderate. On the other hang it certainly offends my sense of equality to think that only certain people should be allowed moderation points. I guess it all probably equals out in the end.
  • I frankly just don't believe you spent more than 3 seconds on that page. The list are for the top ten gaining queries and declining queries. There's no list of top ten overall queries.

    Besides who needs to search for porn? All ya hafta do is enter a likely URL in your browser (http://buttcheeks.com) and you'll instantly have forty windows open all pointing you at 'the best porn on the net'.

  • Stupid me, I forgot that it was html formatted and my <grin> didn't show up. That post was supposed to be good natured, that'll teach me to use preview more often.
  • It's nice to see John Lee Hooker and Bob Marley, instead of some of the lesser (no) talent folks:Lycos Top 50 [lycos.com]

  • Sometimes when watching the show, I make a point of googling the question when somebody phones a friend, just to see if I can do it in ~25 seconds.

  • Adult stuff is only 11% ?

    I wonder if "erotic gallery" search string qualifies as "art". ;)

  • They were obviously doing a search for music from the group Shakespear's Sister [everything2.com]
  • As a native German speaker, I wonder why so many people "borrow" words from the German language these days. Yes, we had the same thing for years (You do not have to know a single German word to understand a teenager from Germany if you speak English nowadays), but what's the point about using German words? Does it really sound that cool to non-Germans?
  • Wrong. Most "trendy" French businessmen believe it has become a sign of archaism to keep on speaking French when doing business. The last "chic" is to speak English in a reunion, without any reasonable reason, surrounded exclusively by native French speakers. More specifically, english is in some sense the "right-wing" language, that is, the language of Anglo-Saxon style capitalism, and French is the "left-wing" language, ie the language of continental social-democracy. I'm caricaturing a bit, but not that much.

    When a French company goes "global" (Alcatel, Vivendi, etc...), English becomes the official language used by the executives to produce documents.
  • Ok, 1st, socialism is not "government controlling people's private affairs". Socialism is when means of production are socialized (that is, owned by the collectivity, typically via the state).

    "Government controlling people's private affairs" is really not a French thing. The French have strong anarchist and individualist tendencies, and they actually tend to consider that the people in the US are much less free than they are, on such matters as alcohol, nudity (classical example: can your girlfriend show her breasts on the beach?), sex and strong language regulations on various media, tobacco, etc... now, THAT is "Government controlling people's private affairs".

    There are absolutely no quotas nor protectionnist measures on movies in France; it is a myth, period. There are just subsidies for French movies, and nothing more. The only quotas there ever was were on some radio stations which were asked to broadcast at least a certain percentage (quite low) of music in which the lyrics were in French. Everybody in France made fun of this law, which was quickly abandonned. This was around 1994. However, this was enough to create these preposterous myths on French cultural quotas. These myths fit so well with Francophobic prejudices that they haven't disappeared yet, after many years.

    Last, there is absolutely no censorship on language on the French Internet.

    I spend half of my life in the US, and half in France. I strongly advise you to come live a few months in France to realize how far from realities your prejudices can be. By all means, don't always trust what is written in the NY Times editorials or in the Wall Street Journal. In the meanwhile, you can read these quite good articles on contemporary France written by Americans (one conservative, one liberal). It may enlighten you on various issues for which your prejudices (economic, cultural, political, whatever) have no ground:

    http://www.policyreview.org/oct00/caldwell_print .h tml

    http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/95dec/france/f ra nce.htm

  • Oh, give me a FUCKING BREAK, will you? Germany is in majority a country with a protestant background, speaking a germanic language (obviously), and as such is culturally "classified" in the norther Europe category. France is in majority a country with a catholic background, it is considered as a latin country, it is in contact with the mediterranean sea, it speaks a roman-type language and was part of the roman empire (Germany was not), and as such is culturally "classified" in the southern Europe category.
  • Latin America today has mostly a geographical sense... Otherwise, one other reason may be that Quebec is not a country, and is part of a country which is in majority protestant and English-speaking, that is, not latin.
  • Yes, read above, I mentioned the Minitel as one of the reasons. Otherwise, FYI the Internet is much less regulated in France than in the US (especially on sex and use of company-owned trademarks for parody and other uses). France has got a bad reputation on this because:

    1- Francophobia is fashionable.
    2- France was a few months late compared with the US in liberalizing its regulations on the use of cryptography (today these rules are more liberal in France than in the US).
    3- A bunch of bigots have found a sympathetic judge for the Yahoo! ruling.

    I should also mention that your "national socialist" qualification of the French government was truly unnecessary.
  • Considering that practically all the queries come from developped countries, it is not that surprising that German is more queried than French: there are approximately 70 million Native French speakers in the developped countries (in France, Quebec, Belgium, Switzerland) and almost 100 million native German speakers (in Germany, Austria, Switzerland).

    Besides, for the moment, the Internet is more widely used in Germany than in France. In part because of the Minitel, and more generally Northern Europe is more connected than Southern Europe (which may be because life is less boring in the neighboorhood of the mediterranean sea, but that's another story :-)).
  • The thing about using Frenchisms, though, is that even if they do have English equivalents there's a certain shade of meaning captured there. For example, there's a lot more snob factor in saying "nouveau riche" than there is in "new rich" -- the English way of saying says you just got money, but to use the French equivalent indicates that you're shoving it down other people's throats.

    /Brian
  • Yeah... There's a headline (no story) in the most recent Onion:

    Jenna Bush's
    Federally Protected
    Wetlands Now Open
    For Public Drilling

    Now to me this is a little OTT. They're college kids -- of course they're going to be a bit wild. And nobody is going to say that they're not hot. But I don't know...

    /Brian
  • Considering the film came out in 1994, and Clinton was the president, I seriously doubt that was a concern of theirs. Also, the movie was about George III, not IV... although I believe the part about American audiences wondering why we hadn't seen the first ones. Link to imdb listing here [imdb.com]
  • That's because Billy Bob in his trailer wouldn't know what roue de la fortune was.

    Would you even care what's on tv if you were married to Angelina Jolie? (Yes, Jolie is a French word too...)
  • I think that the use of a number of German words is coming from philosofy and psychology; sciences from which there are lots and lots of famous Germans. Unfortunately there aren't many internationally famous words originating from my langauge (= Dutch), except for the word "apartheid" :-(
  • You must be joking. You think people watche this crap for the dialogue? BWAHAHA. It's like this:

    Big Brother had boring video on the web. Loft Story had naked babes, and real amateur porn.

    Isn't that reason enough?
  • So run a query already. That's what the thing is made for.
  • its canonical form is now defined by what Google tells us.

    Damn. One of my pet peeves has always been the misspelling of Wookiee [google.com] (14.6k hits) as Wookie [google.com] (49k hits). I guess I'm officially in the wrong, now.

    On the other hand, "Erasmus is right" [google.com] has 4 hits, while "Erasmus is wrong" [google.com] has only 1 hit. So I'm still right 80% of the time.

  • I have to admit, I was curious. I had to know... I ran a google search on "edonkey"

  • My understanding is that the film was to have been called "The Madness Of George" only US audiences might think it referred to Pres. G Bush. Sad, really.

    Tom.

  • I don't think it's necessarily German. It just so happens that some languages have a single word that expresses an idea more succinctly than in English.

    And the same happens to other languages. For example, many style-conscious Spanish-speakers have adopted the English noun "Look", as in "I like her new look." The word describes a combination of style, appearance and even attitude and there isn't a good equivalent in spanish ("moda" is close, but not quite there), so the english word is adopted.

    This happens all the time, and no languages are immune (though the French strive valiantly to keep their language "pure"). Sometimes it's for the utility of a particular word, sometimes for purposes of pretension. Usually it's both.

  • The $1 million question was "On 'The Brady Bunch,' what was Carol Brady's maiden name?" That threw even the most avid TV trivia buffs, and was pretty hard even for a jackpot-level question.

    I was going to say "Carol Martin" and wonder if that was really her maiden name or just her late first husband's name. Deciding to search myself, I see [bradyworld.com] "Tyler" is her maiden name and "Martin" was her name when she married Mike (as I correctly recollected from the pilot). That is pretty tough -- anyone know what show gave that name?

    I may not have any idea who Barbara Schett, Loana and Vicky Botwright are but I do know a little about The Brady Bunch.

    Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.

  • Why search for porn? The internet practically is all porn.

    -----

  • I remember it being called Pret a Porter: Ready to Wear or something to that effect. Not like it's at all relevant. American movies have translated titles in Europe half the time as well. I just went through Greece, Austria, Germany, and France and I probably saw three different translated titles for "The Mummy Returns." Then again, "Antitrust" was always the same. One translation that I thought was pretty impressive was changing "Lola Rennt" to "Run Lola Run." It used an American cultural symbol in with a form of the original title to make an interesting translation. Titles are going to be translated - live with it. It's not just dumb american audiences. Books are the same way. I just read Camus' The Plague ... not Le' Plague or something to that extent. Similarly, I saw billions of copies of John Grishiams (spelling, sorry) Die Jury in Germany and Austria. Now, the translation I understand, but why the hell would any country adopt that author besides America? Then again, Germany also adored David Hasselhoff for awhile, so who knows?
  • Could it be a coincidence that Google runs Linux ? Moreover, you have to wonder how Slashdot itself is mining their own database. You know they are almost certainly selling advertising space based on the total number of 'unique visitors', or impressions, or whatever aggregate statistic they choose to use. What other kinds of statistics would be valuable to advertisers ? Would Slashdot sell stats on the number of subpages users followed for different types of stories (Linux, Windows, etc.) ? Would they charge advertisers more or less to show ads to high-karma users ? If they're smart businessmen maybe they would, but if they are consistent maybe they wouldn't.
  • After thinking about it, they could record it, if instead of giving a direct url, they gave a redirecting url through their site. They don't do this but they could.
  • Arts" took 22% of the pie chart distribution, only 2% more than "Computers". I am happy to see that I am living in a world with lots of people with artistic tastes.

    I apology to destory your confident in humane. In fact porns that don't make people throw up are catagorized as 'Arts'. The rest are put into either 'Adult', 'Science', or 'Reference'.

    Also, those attached with phone sex numbers are put into 'Shopping'.
  • There's still a few hundred movies I haven't downloaded yet before it gets overwhelmed by the masses!

  • Because these aren't the top 10 queries. (Score:3)

    by Vermifax ( 3687 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @02:59AM (#104952)
    They are the top 10 GAINING queries.

    Vermifax

  • Not Flamebait (Score:3)

    by CodeMonky ( 10675 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @02:55AM (#104953) Homepage
    If Google was running on windows instead of linux would the things we could do with the google search data be fascinating or would it be violating our right to search privately?

  • Re:It would be nice (Score:3)

    by wangi ( 16741 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @04:14AM (#104954) Homepage
    You, my boy, are talking crap. They can and do record that information. For example if you search for Slashdot the link you get for Slashdot is:
    You can be sure the http://www.google.com/url script will be logging data before it redirects.

  • If 'zeitgeist' annoys you, then you must really hate this:

    ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS!
    Das komputermaschine ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist easy blowenfusen, schnappen der springenwerk, und poppencorken mit spitzensparken. Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumkopfen. Das rubbernecken sightseeren keepen das hands in der pockets, relaxen, und watchen das blinkenlights.

  • Re:Adult searches rank so low? (Score:3)

    by Cujo ( 19106 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @03:09AM (#104956) Homepage Journal

    This is probably biased by the effect of porn surfers owning a large set of bookmarks for sites that all include links - why would they search Google?

    This is probably true of a lot of the "declining searches" as well. It doesn't mean the public's lost interest, but just that they found what they're looking for. It seems to me that the Google Zeitgeist can at best measure the rate of change of interest in new topics.

  • Re:We are almost there (Score:3)

    by Webmonger ( 24302 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @04:08AM (#104957) Homepage
    No, they we find out what women and men who pose as women really want!
  • I wonder how much this list will affect future measurements? I know that when I saw "edonkey" on the Top 10 declining searches, I did a search [google.com] to see what it was...

  • Re:Ongoing abuse of the German language? (Score:3)

    by wiredog ( 43288 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @03:36AM (#104959) Journal
    It should be noted that english is descended from both German and French. English is the result of a norman man-at-arms trying to get in bed with a saxon barmaid. There's also some church latin in there. Recently, American english has imported Hawaiian, Japanese, Spanish, and others.

  • Re:Google Logging! (Score:3)

    by lizrd ( 69275 ) <adam.bump@us> on Friday July 06, 2001 @05:09AM (#104960) Homepage
    Do you have the google IE toolbar installed? I know that it does some logging of searches and pages visited and things like that. If you don't have it installed you should. It's realy slick. I like it even better than the address bar Google searches in Konqueror.

    ________________________

  • Re:Skewed results (Score:3)

    by Miles ( 79172 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @05:23AM (#104961) Homepage
    Eh? Try the query "+to +be +or not +to +be", including the quotes. There's a reason that google spouts that stuff about 'to' and 'be' being fairly uninformative words.

    And if you take a look at some stat's (eg: http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/mediametr ix.html)
    you'll see that Google is steadily increasing in use (doubling in 5 months) whereas Altavista lost something like a third of its use in the same time.

  • I don't think it's necessarily German. It just so happens that some languages have a single word that expresses an idea more succinctly than in English.

    Notice how we define the word "Zeitgeist" in English as "the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era." So instead of saying the latter phrase, we can just steal a single word from Germany. If we could define the word "Zeitgeist" as "well, it means the same as 'flgrogbrsa' in English, then we'd have no reason to use the German word. I guess we could go to the trouble of making up our own in English, but people in this country have problems as it is with the words we've got.

    There are exceptions, of course, but I think when people borrow German words it's because there's no good English equivalent.

    Now, French on the other hand, is a different story. People in the US use French all the time when there are perfectly acceptable English subtitutes: lèse-majesté (detraction from dignity), par excellence (being the best kind), nouveau riche (new rich), etc. So in that case, we have no excuse. And of course, when people in the US say these French words, they pronounce them perfectly, much to the glee of French people everywhere.

  • Since Google is a Search Engine (Score:3)

    by robbway ( 200983 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @03:50AM (#104963) Journal
    Couldn't they at least provide the queries to link to from their Top Ten lists? What's up with the rise and fall of the Carol Brady Maiden Name search? There must have been a Millionaire question or the like. I find the lists to be titillating to the point of frustration.

    ----------------------

  • It would be nice (Score:3)

    by bmongar ( 230600 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @02:58AM (#104964)
    It would be nice if they included the top 10 clicked links so we know who google directed to the most. Though maybe they don't collect that info. If they did it would also be interesting to see if their partners or premium customers or whatever had more clicks or not.

  • www.wordtracker.com (Score:3)

    by koogydelbbog ( 451219 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @05:43AM (#104965)
    above site has a scrolling ticker showing the top 30 *unfiltered* search terms. some entries:

    1 sex
    2 mp3
    3 hotmail
    4 games
    5 cars
    6 yahoo
    7 music
    8 pokemon
    9 warez
    10 britney
    12 porn
    13 ebay
    18 napster
    20 free porn
    24 hotmail.com
    25 porno

    does anybody else find it odd that people search for yahoo? it's like looking up 'dictionary' in a dictionary.

    andy

  • Shakespear in most mispelt list (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 06, 2001 @03:02AM (#104966)
    How can Google be sure? He spelt his name differently from time to time himself.

  • Obvious omission... (Score:4)

    by Masem ( 1171 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @02:56AM (#104967)
    They need a "Top X 'Naked Pictures' Celebrity Queries".

  • Re:Who? What? Huh? (Score:4)

    by Jethro73 ( 14686 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @03:02AM (#104968)
    Because not every person searching is from the states. I know that "Loft Story" is a French reality TV show... You can see a picture of the winner here [yahoo.com]. She's pretty cute...

    Anyway, that might explain...

    Jethro

  • Top 10 misspelled... (Score:4)

    by morie ( 227571 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @03:00AM (#104969) Homepage
    ... /. articles would be interesting as well

  • Re:Ongoing abuse of the German language? (Score:5)

    by sql*kitten ( 1359 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @03:43AM (#104970)
    I wonder why so many people "borrow" words from the German language these days

    It's like "doppelganger". Why do Germans have a word for that? Does it happen a lot over there? Really, I'm curious.

  • To be honest, the only thing that really surprised me there was how small a percentage of queries were adult related. Wasn't that get rich quick porn guy telling us only the other day on slashdot that adult searches dominated the rankings?
  • Let's go ahead and put Japanese on the list of "bastard" languages that "steal" from others.

    Somebody will have to draw me a diagram here as to how adopting a foreign language word somehow diminish the parent language. Must be something like software "piracy".

  • Re:What should we do oh great Avatar of Wisdom? (Score:5)

    by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Friday July 06, 2001 @05:54AM (#104973)
    > Most people *don't* advance, that's the problem, and that's why ephermal pop-culture crap will always dominate the the Top Ten rising category and then go into the Top Ten declining spot when the fad has fizzled.

    So you geeks in high school or college that want a social life -- all you have to do is find the "rising top 10", click on a few, eliminate the ones that aren't part of your culture (e.g. French Big Brother), and voila, you're on top of the trends.

    Best yet, you can say "Naah, I gave that up, it's so over" when you see 'em on the declining top-10.

    The first few times, it'll be passed off as coincidence. Two or three big fads later, and all the "cool people" at school will forever wonder how the hell you always seem to know what's trendy before they do.

    Once the whole school is following your lead as Supreme Arbiter Of Cool, fuck with their heads. Start a Tux-The-Penguin tattooing craze, for instance...

  • Zeitgeist n. (zeit-geist): the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era.

    1. "OMG, Wimbledon is on! I wonder if somebody's tits have ever fallen out during a match?"

    2. "OMG, Paula Poundstone NO!! You're too funny to get stinky fingers from bubblegummers! Somebody please tell me it's not true!"

    3. "OMG, Jack Lemmon died!!!!! But, but...but he's not supposed to be DEAD! I bet I can find him still alive somewhere online."

    4. "OMG, I was going to fly out to meet Mr. goatse.cx! Surely the strike is over by now!?"

    5. "OMG, I bet if I searched for Barbara Schett she would have sex with me!"

    6. "OMG, Napster was shut down, wasn't it? Or was it! I want the new N-Sync single 'I wanna do it in your butt' on mp3!!! Where the hell is Napster???"

    7. "OMG, I love catch phrases sooooooo much!!!!"

    8. "OMG, people are racing bicycles again!!! There's no time for annual sales reports or gay pr0n when people are racing BICYCLES through le French countryside! C'est bon!"

    9. "OMG, I like basketball and I've inexplicably found cause to use Google for my search engine. I'm sure glad my nerdy friend told me why it's supposed to be better than AOL's Internet, but I sure do miss all the pr0n...anyway, maybe they'll finally draft me into the NBA if I look it up online. I coulda made it..."

    10. "OMG, Vicky Botwright is so awesome!!! Maybe she'll sleep with me if I look her up on the Internet. It is TOO a real sport, asshole! Squash has been around for EVER! PBBBBHT!!!!!"


    "Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"

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