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Google Insights for Search

Google have this week unveiled, Google Insights for Search is a pretty nifty tool which lets you look at search patterns across time, geographic regions, and by category.

So for example, let's take a look at searches for the word “NASCAR”.

You can see a pretty interesting pattern here - interest in NASCAR peaks at the beginning of the year, and then falls towards the end of the year. I don't know why this is, but I guess that there might be some sort of NASCAR season. To be honest, I've got no idea what a NASCAR is, but I can tell that Americans seem to like it, as, using the same tool, I can discover that only Americans search for NASCAR:-

Well, that's almost true. As you can see from the list above, lots of people in Iraq also search for NASCAR! And according to a search volume (filtered to only show Iraq), NASCAR only became popular in Iraq in 2006:-
. What can it all mean?

There are other things you'd expect to have some sort of seasonal variance, such as an umbrella. However, the stats don't bear this out. They do however show that people started being very interested in umbrellas in mid 2007! Or perhaps this coincided with the release of “Umbrella” by the popstrel Rihanna.

Other things which you wouldn't expect to show any seasonal variance, in fact show a surprising seasonal effect. This is for “Mongoose”

I couldn't find any other animals which showed a seasonal variation like this. Cat, Elephant, Giraffe, and Hamster are all flat (though there is a sinister uptick in hamster searches throughout 2008, mostly from Great Britain).

Other exciting searches include:-
“Maddie” - Portugal very excited

“Cup of tea” (Go UK!)

“Hot Teens” (Yemen, Pakistan and Syria interestingly topping the charts on this one…)

“Cliff Richard” (UK again, though note the interest in Cliff seems to peak around Christmas each year)

“Global Warming” (has captured the interest of lots of Island nations. Funny that…)

“Britney Spears” (clearly popping out babies, getting married, divorcing, getting married, divorcing, shaving her hair off, not wearing panties, and going a bit rubbish were just a cunning rouse to counter her declining Google popularity. Except in Madagascar, where she has always been massive.)

I think that's about enough for now. Go see what you can discover, and let me know!

Posted by nikn