John Battelle has in his possession an email from Google introducing the brand new Google Hot Trends Service. Despite the email saying the service was to launch Monday night, it's off to a not-so-hot start as it we're simply redirected to a page indicating that they're doing maintenance and will be back in a few hours. Maybe they meant Hawaiian time for that launch.Regardless, the service sounds very cool. The premise seems very simple: take Google Zeitgeist, a not well-known but very neat service, and make it a constantly updating list.
Ah, wait. I'm getting word - yep, it's up. Here's a link to the top 100. And the Hot Trend in search today, the 21st...
'Andy and Teressa'?
I have absolutely no idea what that means, though the fact that the top 5 is completely related to The Bachelor, I'm gonna go ahead and take a stab in the dark that it has something to do with that.
Ah, here we go (you're learning here with me folks). Clicking on the term takes you to a page which helps you clarify what the term is likely referring to by showing related searches, news articles, and blog posts. It also shows the term's "Hotness" - yes, hotness. 'Andy and Teressa' are "On Fire" according to Google.
But that's not the hotest - there is "Volcanic"! (as well as "Spicy", "Medium" and so forth...)
You can also see the term's graph and - very cool - how long ago its peak search time was ('Andy and Teressa' peaked 3 hours ago). And get a breakdown of the city that most searched for the term percetage-wise.
Better still may be the link that allows you to 'Discuss with others', which on click takes you to a Google Group for Hot Trends. I expect to see things of this nature a lot more in the future on Google's various properties, but it would be better if within the Hot Trends group they had individual subcategories just for the hot term you clicked on. The larger picture is shaping up quite nicely...
Some other interesting ones on the Top 100 list: 'Tasmanian Tiger' at 17. 'Google Smart Ass' coming in at 39. 'Stir of Echoes' at 74 - why are people heavily searching that movie today? 'www.abc.com' at 100 - now if you're going to search for www.abc.com, why not just type that in your web browser? It'd save a few clicks.
Wow. I'd say a good 20% of the list is entirely related to The Bachelor. I think there was only one or two each for Heroes and 24 even though their finales were tonight as well. Take from that what you will.
Seems like a pretty interesting little service. With so many people putting info into Google, it's interesting to see it come back in a daily summary. It can definitely say something not only about the Internet, but about our culture (the trends are region-based) in general - or just about whatever is on TV that night...
It'd be nice if Google had a more graphical layout for it a-la Google's Year-End Zeitgeist, but maybe that's being too picky.
I anticipate tomorrow to be a completely American Idol dominated Top 20.
[UPDATE]: As I update my story I see that the list is indeed constantly updating and mutating like a living creature. 'Avandia' (the diabetes drug that is now linked with increased heart attack risk) just reached "Volcanic" levels and claimed the top spot from The Bachelor couple (the same couple I had never heard of 20 minutes ago, but now feel like I know them well).
Wow. This is great. It's fun. It's like a crowd-sourced TechMeme for any topic. I could just sit here all day, get the news and learn some new things...
More on this: TechCrunch | Search Engine Land | Google Operating System | Reuters | Official Google Blog
4 comments:
I have been using Google Trend since last year. It is good to see they created this useful feature.
When I look at the historical data, it is really interesting to see that I have never made any of the top 10 searches... I wondered if Google filtered/ manipulated the results..
My guess would be that they are filtering out some of the less-than-savory results, but I doubt they are manipulating them beyond that.
You just have to think about what America as a whole searches for.
Just like how I don't read Star magazine, but there's a reason there are hundreds of copies at every single grocery store.
Ya, pretty sure they have filtered it ... which is what they have done in their top 2006 searches ;)
Btw, I like the new comment section in Parislemon.
Thanks Andy - just constantly doing some little tweaks to improve things...
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