18 October 2008

Billboard Year-End Top Pop Artists 2004-2007

I took Billboard's Year-End Top Pop artists since 2004: Usher, 50 Cent, Chris Brown and Akon.



Google Insights for Search showed that the artists that "won" earlier also scored higher overall. It bore witness to the staying power of the top stars, I guess. As expected, the year that an artist was declared top artist was usually his top year of Google-popularity. Only Chris Brown peaked much higher later than in his "winning" year.

17 October 2008

Weekdays in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and The Netherlands

Today I faced off the five weekdays in five European countries. Let's start with the UK:



Friday was on top, with an annual peak around Good Friday (typically in March or April). The less-represented Tuesday nevertheless also displayed an annual peak around Fat Friday (Mardi Gras) in February. Monday had a lone but impressive peak in May 2006: I have no clue why. Googlers in the UK were least interested in Thursday. Next, Germany, using the local names (as in all countries; but always in chronological order on the graph, to make comparisons easier).



The ranking in popularity of the weekdays is similar to the UK. No. 1, Freitag, showed a more even trend line though, no real peak for Good Friday. Mittwoch, however, had many serious peaks without a clear annual pattern emerging. Dienstag was dead last. The French days of the week faced off as follows:



They were pretty much all on the same base level though lundi especially had quite a few strong peaks, usually about in May. I suppose the May 2005 one could be related to referendum on the proposed new European constitution (Monday May 30). Mercredi was the overall loser. Now I went down southeast for the Italian stage of our little "Tour of Europe":



I included the unaccented variants of the days in the comparison as Google distinguishes them to a certain extent. The weekdays were more or less bundled together except for uneven trend lines for venerdì, martedì and lunedì especially. The reasons escape me. At the bottom we found mercoledì again. Then it was on to Spain:



This country had a profile unlike any of the others: all days were on similar flat, low levels of interest except for a humongous peak for jueves in July 2007. Again, I am at a loss to explain this anomaly. The least interesting day in Spain seemed to be miércoles but not by a meaningful margin. Finally, we looked into The Netherlands:



Vrijdag won this one. I venture that this is related to Good Friday again: look at the annual peaks. There was even a corollary annual donderdag small peak: Maundy Thursday (Witte Donderdag) perhaps? In Holland, dinsdag was the least interesting.

16 October 2008

Golden Retriever vs. German Shepherd vs. Yorkshire Terrier vs. Labrador Retriever vs. Staffordshire Bull Terrier

Using data from the American Kennel Club (2007), the Australian National Kennel Council (2007), the Canadian Kennel Club (2007) and the UK Kennel Club (2006) (see Wikipedia), I calculated what were the five most commonly registered dog breeds in these four countries together: an Anglo-Saxon top 5 so to speak. I did this by assigning ranking points in reverse of the rankings, e.g, the German Shepherd, no. 3 in Canada, got 8 ranking points from Canada. The four kennel clubs' top 10s actually accounted for only 22 distinct dog breeds. This was the full list by the way:
  • 1. Labrador Retriever 40
  • 2. German Shepherd (Dog) 32
  • 3. Golden Retriever 26
  • 4. Staffordshire Bull Terrier 14
  • 4. Yorkshire Terrier 14
  • 6. Cavalier King Charles Spaniel 12
  • 6. (English) Cocker Spaniel 12
  • 8. Boxer 10
  • 8. Poodle 10
  • 10. (English) Springer Spaniel 8
  • 11. Beagle 6
  • 11. Shetland Sheepdog 6
  • 13. Border Collie 5
  • 14. Dachshund 4
  • 14. Miniature Schnauzer 4
  • 14. Pug 4
  • 14. Shih Tzu 4
  • 18. West Highland White Terrier 3
  • 19. Dalmatian 2
  • 20. Bernese Mountain Dog 1
  • 20. Border Terrier 1
  • 20. Bulldog 1
  • 20. Rottweiler 1

So what did Google Insights for Search teach me?



Google-popularity ranked the doggies this way:
  1. Golden Retriever
  2. German Shepherd
  3. Yorkshire Terrier
  4. Labrador Retriever
  5. Staffordshire Bull Terrier

This latter list is different from the four-kennel-club rankings. The Labrador Retriever (no. 1) switched places with the Golden Retriever (no. 4). The Yorkie threatened for some time to overtake the German Shepherd but in the end didn't succeed. The Golden Retriever suffered an outspoken decline but stayed clearly on top. But let's look at another feature of Google Insights for Search: split-ups of how the different dogs did in specific countries, starting with the Golden Retriever:



Golden Retrievers were most popular in the US, Austria and Canada. When digging deeper, in the US, the top states were Maine, Colorado and Alaska. How about the German Shepherd?



This time, the US, Australia and South Africa were tops while inside the US it was Alaska, North Carolina and Virginia. Germany wasn't even in the top 10 but of course they would use the German word, Deutscher Schäferhund, to search. Next, the Yorkie.



Lo and behold, Hungary searched most for the lapdog, then South Africa and the US (top states: Georgia, West Virginia, Mississipi). Let's check on the good old Lab:



Labrador Retrievers were Google-popular in the US, the Philippines and Canada. The top 3 US states were Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire. Last but not least, to utilize a well-worn cliché, came the Staffordshire Bull Terrier, a breed with which I must admit I wasn't familiar.



The UK, Norway and Australia were most interested. The US came in only 9th this time (top states: Alaska, Hawaii, Louisiana).

15 October 2008

John McCain vs. Barack Obama vs. Bob Schieffer

The third and last US presidential debate took place tonight at Hofstra University in Hempstead, NY. I started by following the same methodology as with the first and second debates and the vice presidential debate, amended regarding Wordle by my 10-5-08 post. So let's start with the bubble graph displaying length of words, sentences as well as number of words:



As usual, the moderator (Schieffer) spoke far less. Obama tended to use longer sentences. I did an extra analysis again, this time focusing on speaking turns and the number of words and sentences per turn:



McCain had the most speaking turns, followed closely by Schieffer. Obama clearly had the least. However, Obama used a lot more words per turn than McCain. Schieffer came in dead last as a moderator should. It seems to me that this pattern was the result of McCain interrupting Obama a lot and Schieffer attempting to stop this. In other words, McCain was more aggressive, pushy.

Next, the by now traditional word clouds.

John McCain





Barack Obama





Bob Schieffer



OK, now what did it all mean? McCain was talking most about Obama—hey, he did call him "Sen." at least—followed by America, and the trio of need, going and now. He did not once use his opponent's first name, Barack: he didn't want to portray him too much as a human being, I suppose? Obama on the other hand used John 8 times, often by itself. Otherwise, his biggest words were going and think. People, now and make came next. Only then do we get down to McCain, health and want. Obama was talking more to the voters, explaining policy. Finally, Schieffer used, of course, Sen. the most but it was more accompanied by McCain than Obama. This reinforced our impression that he was trying to reign McCain in a bit. One more funny thing: Schieffer's catch phrase is "all right": he used it 17 times hence the prominence of right in his word cloud (all is a common word that is filtered out by Wordle).

14 October 2008

7-Day Top Searches in Germany, Brazil, the US, Australia and Japan

Using Google Insights for Search's Download as CSV feature, I made a spreadsheet of the top searches for the last 7 days in five countries. For reasons that are unclear to me, the data yielded the top 50 for Germany, Brazil and Australia but only the top 44 for the US and Japan. I established a list of all the unique search terms and made a stacked graph using the standardized values for each country. It's a little big as there's a very long tail, in other words, there isn't a lot of overlap.



I realize the graph is hard to read but Blogger somehow reduced the size. Here are the search terms with their respective total values:
  1. youtube 375
  2. yahoo 290
  3. google 230
  4. ebay 180
  5. myspace 175
  6. facebook 165
  7. hotmail 130
  8. msn 125
  9. you tube 115
  10. orkut 100
  11. jogos 100
  12. games 100
  13. wikipedia 90
  14. maps 70
  15. gmail 60
  16. my 55
  17. craigslist 55
  18. gmx 50
  19. amazon 50
  20. weather 45
  21. mixi 45
  22. dictionary 45
  23. wetter 40
  24. web 40
  25. news 40
  26. 2ch 40
  27. 価格 40
  28. test 35
  29. 楽天 35
  30. 地図 35
  31. white pages 30
  32. web.de 30
  33. uol 30
  34. telefonbuch 30
  35. spiele 30
  36. real estate 30
  37. globo 30
  38. bild 30
  39. ニコニコ 30
  40. yahoo mail 25
  41. tradutor 25
  42. terra 25
  43. studivz 25
  44. mapquest 25
  45. cnn 25
  46. baixaki 25
  47. 天気 25
  48. westpac 20
  49. wer kennt wen 20
  50. tv guide 20
  51. schülervz 20
  52. routenplaner 20
  53. qantas 20
  54. mobile 20
  55. leo 20
  56. hotmail.com 20
  57. frases 20
  58. 譬ェ萓。 20
  59. bebo 20
  60. anz 20
  61. ヤフー 20
  62. yellow pages 15
  63. yahoo.com 15
  64. wkw 15
  65. where is 15
  66. walmart 15
  67. vivo 15
  68. utube 15
  69. tre 15
  70. telstra 15
  71. target 15
  72. spiegel 15
  73. seek 15
  74. red tube 15
  75. optus 15
  76. oi 15
  77. nhk 15
  78. nab 15
  79. mensagens 15
  80. icq 15
  81. hi5 15
  82. goo 15
  83. freenet 15
  84. firefox 15
  85. espn 15
  86. detran 15
  87. db 15
  88. commonwealth bank 15
  89. claro 15
  90. caixa 15
  91. big day out 15
  92. bank of america 15
  93. asx 15
  94. aol 15
  95. 鄙サ險ウ 15
  96. 螟ゥ豌嶺コ亥 ア 15
  97. ノーベル賞 15
  98. vagalume 10
  99. tse 10
  100. trading post 10
  101. t-online 10
  102. the age 10
  103. tchibo 10
  104. runescape 10
  105. receita federal 10
  106. postbank 10
  107. otto 10
  108. o2 10
  109. ninemsn 10
  110. netbank 10
  111. net 10
  112. myspace.com 10
  113. myspace layouts 10
  114. msnbc 10
  115. miniclip 10
  116. mercado livre 10
  117. meinvz 10
  118. jogos online 10
  119. jogos de meninas 10
  120. jetstar 10
  121. jappy 10
  122. jal 10
  123. ig 10
  124. hoyts 10
  125. home depot 10
  126. herald sun 10
  127. google maps 10
  128. gmx.de 10
  129. 驛オ萓ソ逡ェ蜿キ 10
  130. dmm 10
  131. dicionario 10
  132. deutsche bank 10
  133. dax 10
  134. das Örtliche 10
  135. currency converter 10
  136. concursos 10
  137. club penguin 10
  138. bom 10
  139. bol 10
  140. bigpond 10
  141. bate papo 10
  142. barack obama 10
  143. börse 10
  144. au 10
  145. aol.com 10
  146. ana 10
  147. americanas 10
  148. afl 10
  149. 大和生命 10
  150. 繝九さ繝九さ蜍慕判 10
  151. youtube.com 5
  152. you tube.com 5
  153. xnxx 5
  154. webkinz 5
  155. tv programm 5
  156. tim 5
  157. southwest airlines 5
  158. schuelervz 5
  159. photobucket 5
  160. pandora 5
  161. oi torpedo 5
  162. nikoniko 5
  163. my space 5
  164. msn.com 5
  165. messenger 5
  166. letras de musicas 5
  167. kboing 5
  168. jra 5
  169. itau 5
  170. horoscopo 5
  171. gyao 5
  172. google.com 5
  173. globo.com 5
  174. g1 5
  175. fernsehprogramm 5
  176. facebook login 5
  177. 貍ォ逕サ鬢ィ 5
  178. deutsche bahn 5
  179. cpz 5
  180. cifras 5
  181. caixa economica 5
  182. bradesco 5
  183. 遏ウ逕ー譛ェ譚・ 5
  184. 邱呈婿諡ウ 5
  185. 菴仙キ晄\・萓ソ 5
  186. 荳画オヲ蜥檎セゥ 5
  187. ユーチューブ 5
  188. 繝ヲ繝九け繝ュ 5
  189. 繧「繧イ繧オ繧イ 5
  190. 繧ャ繝ウ繝\繝  00 5


The social networking sites, search, Wikipedia, ... the usual suspects are internationally Google-popular. I must admit I'm a little baffled by the number of people searching for "Google" in the Google search engine: maybe these came from in-browser search boxes? Yahoo mail and weather were only searched in the US. Only Australians typed in games a lot. There are more examples of interesting/puzzling details. Temporarily, the full-scale graph can be viewed here.

12 October 2008

B. Geldof vs. Bono vs. FAO vs. Greenpeace vs. H. Kohl vs. Hu J. vs. HRW vs. I. Betancourt vs. K. Kelly vs. M. Ahtisaari vs. M. Tsvangirai vs. Others

Finnish former prime minister and international conflict mediator Martti Ahtisaari has won this year's Nobel Peace Prize. Congratulations! Using Google Insights for Search, I traced the popularity of the most commonly rumored nominees for this prestigious prize during the last 12 months. I experimented with a new format. I downloaded the real, unstandardized number sequences for a large number of nominees and then selected out the 16 with the highest average score. These were then represented as colored bands in a normalized, stacked area diagram:



Notice that Ahtisaari was not exactly the most popular. That role was assigned to rock band U2's musician and activist Bono. Next came Human Rights Watch (HRW), the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and Greenpeace. The only other rumored nominee with decent Google-popularity was peace activist Kathy Kelly.