Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Google Does Everything Better: Even Trends.

My preoccupation with the various websites and means of tracking trends on ye olde Internet is well-known and documented. Whenever a new site or method for tracking Internet trends is created or discovered, I am usually all over it.

Well I missed this one, and everyone else has apparently been writing about it. However, this is so fucking cool that I will still fawn all over that shit.

Because let’s face it, the only thing better then trendspotting is Google, and now Google does trendspotting.

Wha wha wha wha?

Hells yes.

Google Trends is the best thing since sliced bread. What’s it do? It tracks trends in searching (culled from samples) and gives a breakdown by such awesome categories as city, region, or language. Not only does it track trends, but it tracks them with a graph over the course of several years, with a separate minigraph that tracks media mentions. This is so cool. Here are some random dumb things I have found.

Chuck Norris is big in Poland. I always check Chuck Norris on trend spotters because it is typically a good example. Sure enough Google Trends shows the rise of Chuck Norris very nicely and shows the relevant news stories. The cool stuff comes when you look at the Cities and Regions tabs. When you do, you will see that Chuck Norris is apparently inexplicably sought after throughout many cities in Poland. Weird.

Knowing this, there is one thing that I knew I must check: Is David Hasselhoff big in Germany? Well, no. But he’s big in Norway, Ireland, and Sweden? What the fuck? He’s not big in Germany but is sought after throughout the rest of Europe as well as Australia and New Zealand. This is strange.

Oh, everyone else has mentioned this, but it’s still cool: Check out “sex.” Now look at the regions where it is popular. That’s right, it’s a virtual who’s who of repression: Pakistan, Egypt, Viet Nam, Iran occupy the top four spots. Neat-o, huh? Who would have thought that in nations that suppress information about sexuality people are still eager to find out about it anyway.

Oh also, that’s another cool thing you can do with Google Trends: check out the relative status of various kinks. So, for example, take ass fisting. It’s apparently very popular amongst the denizens of Zurich. A look at languages and regions reveals that it actually most popular amongst the Greek-speaking populations of the world. Yes, that’s right.

Ass fisting is popular in Greece. Which seems fair considering how important Greece is to ass fisting.

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