Just time for a short post today, pointing you to yet another cool and addictive prototype from Google, Google Trends. This system allows you to view the relative frequency of searches for up to five terms, plotted along a timeline. Says Google:
With Google Trends, you can compare the world’s interest in your favorite topics. Enter up to five topics and see how often they’ve been searched for on Google over time. Google Trends also displays how frequently your topics have appeared in Google News stories, and which geographic regions have searched for them most often.
For an example of the useful/useless knowledge available through the service, check out my trend analysis for theater, classical music, opera, and cheese.
Don’t forget that in some other places in the world (including your northern neighbour and your British war allies), “theater” is actually spelled “theatre”… so that may skew your results a bit if you look at a global trend. 🙂
Also, “classical music” was the only term with a modifer. That will certainly limit the number of hits. If, say, “comic opera” or “musical theater (or theatre, as Sherri pointed out,) the number of hits would have been fewer…
I should probably make the point that my particular bundle of keywords was completely unscientific and intentionally lame. But if others come up with intriguing words or phrases to track against each other on the Google Trends system, please post them here!
Here’s one: Maria Callas vs. Britney Spears
http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22maria+callas%22%2C+%22britney+spears%22
Although I’m cheesy and operatic, for the sake of opera I’m glad to see there doesn’t seem to be an obvious relationship between opera and cheese.