Google Trends has something new: a daily Zeitgeist. Google lets you see the 100 queries that had the biggest evolution in a certain day. For now, Google only shows the "hottest" queries in the US, but other countries should follow.
For each query, you can see a graph that shows the popularity of the query, related searches and the top results from Google News, Blog Search and Web Search. These results should explain why the queries are popular.
Like the old Zeitgeist, Google Hot Trends will be an archive of the most important queries. That means you can select a day from the past and see the people, the events, the questions which defined that day.
According to Reuters, "Hot Trends (...) will be refreshed several times daily, using data from millions of Google Web searches conducted up to an hour before each update".
The list for May 21 includes two very long and improbable queries:
* #26: [what did lawyer ellis rubin suggest prison inmates could donate in exchange for reduction in their sentences in 1992]
* #90: [who was the first new world explorer to take a dip in the springs of what's now hot springs arkansas]
... and is topped by Avandia, a drug prescribed to treat diabetes that was found to increase the risk of heart attacks.
It started since a week ago? Or does it start just today and provide data from one week ago?
ReplyDeleteIt started today and it only shows data starting from May 15.
ReplyDeleteThe more i'm using it, the more interesting things get! You can see how popular a search query is in a particular city or state.
ReplyDeleteI expect to see more things like this in the future from Google!
Perhaps the reason Hot Springs, Ark. garnered so many queries is because the resort town was featured as the cover story of Sunday's (May 20) travel section of New York Daily News.
ReplyDeleteRecently geographer Warren Bland named Hot Springs, Ark. the No. 1 place in America to retire.
I gotta admit, Hot Springs is a pretty cool place to live, even for those of us who aren't yet retired. Ask Sherry Amatenstein , the New York travel journalist who visited here recently!
After googling it I learned that #26 is some question off a radio show on us99.5.
ReplyDeleteI can never figure out how to work this...maybe a good post would be "How to use Zeitgeist for extreme dummies"
ReplyDeleteNo but seriously, I go to that page and there are very few options...and anything I type in gives me a "Not enough data to provide results" type message...
I think this is awesome. I look into the MOB psyche maybe?
ReplyDeleteI love lists, any kind of lists really. They are so freaking interesting and this has to be one of the best lists ever!
A lot of these look like crossword clues. I don't have access to NYT Premium online. Anybody have today's paper to see if there's an overlap?
ReplyDeleteIt makes me wonder--will people start spamming fake results so they will boost the query to the top as a stealthy way to advertise?
ReplyDelete