Portland's Google Trends
According to the Willamette Week, Google has started some new cool computer thang called Google Trends where can you find out Google searching habits by city proper. I tried to find it and couldn't, so I'll just repeat some of the things WW found.
#1 (in the world) - marijuana, meth, liquer, microbrew, Universal Life Church, impeach Bush, I hate Bush, assisted suicide, vegan, bike repair, unemployment, fairie
#2 - pretentious, nymph, anarchy, fascism
#3 - zombie, werewolf, pirate, bigfoot, Baha'i, kill Bush
#4 - underage sex
#5 - voodoo
#6 - cigs, wicca, eugenics
posted by chuckdaddy2000 at 7:15 pm
11 Comments:
www.google.com/trends
...or you could just Google it, duh.
Like most Google products, it's one fuck of a fun toy for the first several minutes. My favorite is to pit my five bands of the moment against each other, to see who's winning. You could do the same for movies, TV shows, or big-name economists too, I suppose.
Just did some searching on it. Found out that Athens, Greece is the #1 searcher for crack and that the top 5 searchers for The Beatles were from South America.
Oh, and if anyone else was surprised that Portland, or at least Eugene, wasn't #1 for Wicca, I guess go to Brazil, who had the top five spots.
I've been looking at Trends in a little more depth -- it's kind of interesting that there is some kind of seasonality to querries almost EVERYTHING. With pop culture stuff, there are obviously spikes after an event or a product release.
I threw in "apples" -- what's more boring and nuetral than apples? -- but there is a big bulge of interest in fall, which I guess must be because it's apple harvest time. So I tried "DNA," but even there there's a real noticeable dip at the end of the year, and perhaps in summer -- people are on vacation, they are not thinking about serious stuff. Plant names tend to give you a big seasonal spike during the plant's growing season. The MOST seasonal thing I could find was the "Easter Bunny."
My next challenge is to see if I can think of anything that has two distinct seasonal spikes, or three.....
Just thought of a two-spiker, and it works beautifully: "equinox."
Three-spiker, anyone?
Yes, PDX was one of the top emanations for the phrase "impeach Bush", but I also heard that the phrase "Ashley Simpson" was used from the same sample about 10 times more. Just shows ye...
Wow Michael- this really is an incredible waste of time. I am struggling to find a triple spiker. I thought "school break" would work, with winter, spring, and summer, but the winter and spring kind of merge together. I will continue the search.
I did find an extremely pure double spiker with "Daylight Savings Time" and a negative spike with "math".
Found it. "Playoffs" (because of basketball, football, baseball)- although it's not very pure
Beautiful! I especially like "math."
"Estimated Tax" is a very nice four-spiker.
Ooh, here's a trippy four-spiker: "gift ideas."
Here's an interesting three-spiker: "Independance Day."
OK, I'll shut up now.
Unless I figure out a five-spiker.
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