Talk:Google Trends/Archive 1

interesting words to show

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BTW: look at the pattern that [summer, winter] creates.

another fine examples can be found here: http://www.micropersuasion.com/2006/05/25_things_i_lea.html

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Talgalili (talk • contribs) 22:04, 14 April 2007 (UTC).

Explanation

Google seem to be very sketchy on what exactly Google Trends does, and even what the results mean. Why are there no exact figures? Do the 'cities' below show where the searches were from or where websites are hosted?

I would like to see data explaining this on the Google Trends article.

Will 16:07, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Google Trends charts how often a particular search term is entered across various regions of the world, and in various languages. The horizontal axis of the graph represents time (starting from some time in 2004), and the vertical is how often a term is searched for, globally.

It's pretty fun to guess what citizens of your hometown are interested in -- for instance here in Vancouver, a lot of people are evidentally looking up the word 'nuclear' and 'Wii' (the upcoming Nintendo console)

And to clarify, the 'cities' section is based on Google's guess of where the searcher is living, not where any websites originate.

--Chris 21:40, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Chris, I did have my suspicions that it was where the searcher is living, as when I searched for the English racial slur 'paki' (Vulgar slang meant to mean Pakistani, but instead is used for all who look Middle-Eastern), the city that it found that searched for it most was Bradford, which is well known for its racism.

Today it appears to have changed, however, to various Pakistani cities. Also I see they have added some form of help system. but thank you for your time.

Will 19:52, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

I found this to be most informative, Hint: Look at the regions. link

An example of a mysterious "seasonal search trend" given is that searches for Mesopotamia peaks at the end of September. This could be due to the fact that September is the beginning of many school years, and Mesopotamia is a common subject studied early in World History courses. (user: adamdesautel)

Tagalog

Tagalog and the Philippines seems to come out disproportionately off at the top of searches. A bug perhaps. Jooler 18:16, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

"Mesopotamia"

The article mentions that searches for "Mesopotamia" tend to spike in September, and talks about how odd this is.

I don't find it odd at all. In the northern hemisphere, the school year tends to begin in late August or early September, and Mesopotamia tends to be discussed fairly early in world history courses.

Compare results for "Mesopotamia," to "Roman empire," "Ancient Egypt," "Ancient Greece," and "Cliff notes." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Linguofreak (talk • contribs) 23:01, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Yet another example of google being a history essay writer's best friend. Sjschen (talk) 14:47, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Matlab correlation

The article is wrong in saying the trend for MATLAB solely corresponds to the new years. It dips in the middle of the year too, and it's clearly correlated to the spring and fall college semesters when engineering and math students are searching for help with MATLAB computations. No mystery there.Funkbomb (talk) 16:17, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Removed paragraphs

i removed these as they were either WP:OR or not WP:RS. 212.200.243.13 (talk) 11:05, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

The real top search terms

NOWHERE I look has actually been able to provide a list of words that are simply get the highest ranking on Google Trends. This is really frustrating when you consider how simple of a question it is. This closest I was able to find was this outdated and incorrect blog post.

So, I want to ask if anyone has a RS on this shockingly simple question. Google Trends gives relative search volume, and I know that "popularity" or whatever doesn't necessarily follow from that, and the site itself has bugs, but I don't care. I just want to know what the top search terms are by the GT index. Nobody anywhere gives this information. I beg you to prove me wrong, alright!

My experimentation has produced several words that vastly out preform, but all I can do is a version of natural selection, so I can't absolutely prove anything. But with my attempts, I have found the following to be strongest:

youtube, facebook, google, myspace, sex, porn, yahoo, video, dvd, you, with, i, world, my

Obviously, some of these are getting high ratings because they are basic English words. But what you probably will find surprising is that youtube and facebook appear to now be outranking... well everything. The ranking of "you" has literally doubled because of youtube. -Theanphibian ^{(talk • contribs)} 16:21, 5 April 2009 (UTC)