« Small New England Museums Worth Seeing | Main | The Excitement Builds.... »
July 9, 2006
The latest - Google Trends
Nothing will excite Inner Geek more than learning about the latest tech gizmos, gadgets, and techniques. I had the luxury of reading the New York Times cover to cover on Wednesday, as our choir was heading to Chicago to perform Frank Ferko's Psalm Cantata at the meeting of the American Guild of Organists. (It went well, and I've really grown to love the piece. I know the music well enough now that I could let the texts work their magic on me - it's really quite beautiful. But I digress... )
The headline that caught my eye was "The Internet Knows What You'll Do Next" (NYT 7/5/2006, C1). Pretty scary, eh? The article talks about "Google Trends," one of the latest Google offerings.
(To find Google Trends, go to the Google home page (www.google.com), click on "more," and then click on "google labs" and then "google trends". Or just go here.)
The article's author argues that Google can identify what will be happening in the future on the basis of the searches that people do beforehand. Makes sense, of course. Here's a description from the article: "It allows you to check the relative popularity of any search term, to look at how it has changed over the last couple years and to see the cities where the term is most popular."
The search tool requires that you enter at least 2 terms -- and up to 5. So I searched for the use of geek vs. nerd. Would you believe that the second highest use of "geek" (in the world) is in Minneapolis? We come right after Portland, Oregon. Fancy that. Now I'm hooked.
Next, I paired adoption and foster care. Interestingly, Minneapolis is #3 in the world for mentions of adoption. (I am not surprised.) One of the nifty things that Google Trends does is to identify when spikes of searches have occurred and to link them to news headlines of those days. Here are 4 frequency spikes for "adoption."
a) Tsunami raises interest in adoption (Jan., 2005). Remember the huge rush of calls that came immediately after the tsunami, when people wanted to adopt babies that had been separated from their parents?
b) Nevada bill to make written post-adoption contracts legally enforceable. (Feb 2005) This was a story about the attempt to make written agreements about post adoption contact between birthparents and adoptive parents legally binding. I don't know if it passed. Note to self: look it up!
c) Adopt-a-Pet up for adoption. (Sept. 2005) This was a headline from Victoria, TX about an adopt-a-pet program being ousted from a shopping mall and needing a new home.
d) Adoption Institute Supports Gay Parents" (March 2006) about the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute supporting the right of gay and lesbian persons to adopt.
So it is interesting to see how headlines cause spikes in google searches, and thus how those searches might forecast something about news to come.
I'm eager to play with this a lot more! One sentence in the NYT story read, "And it's totally addictive." I agree - just like its sibling, Google Earth. Here's a picture of 4 generations of the men in my family while I was demonstrating Google Earth to my father just a few weeks ago. He was truly amazed.
Posted by hgroteva at July 9, 2006 5:59 AM | Adoption | Technology