Word Face-Off

He had gone vs. He had went vs. He has gone vs. He has went

2010-05-06T11:07:00.000-07:00

As of late, I started to notice that a lot of people seem to be using the simple past tense of "to go" instead of the past participle for the past perfect, e.g., "he had went" instead of the correct "he had gone." I wasn't aware of this phenomenon so I used Google Insights for Search to see how common this is/was. I also included the present perfect to see if that showed the same pattern.

Not only has this "error" been around for years but it only applies to the past perfect and not to the present perfect. "He had went" dominates but "he has went" doesn't. Hmm... By the way, I wasn't able to check on whether this phenomenon has geographical variation because the data Google uses seem to come overwhelmingly only from the US.

Gregory House vs. Lisa Cuddy vs. Temperance Brennan vs. Seeley Booth

2010-04-19T15:17:00.000-07:00

Today, I compare the main characters of the popular TV shows House M.D. and Bones. First, we look at the regular Google web search:

In short, Dr. House rules but Dr. Cuddy has clearly been gaining on him. Then comes Dr. Brennan closely followed by Agent Booth, both steadily increasing in search volume but distinctively behind the two front runners—just like the shows themselves, I guess. Google Insights for Search also provides us with country-specific breakouts and rankings:

While the House M.D. characters are most popular in Mexico, the Bones ones are in the US. Overall, House M.D. is more an international phenomenon than Bones. I take it this must be due to the latter not being broadcast in so many countries. Bones characters' regional interest is odd: hardly any European countries make into the top 10 but, for instance, Zimbabwe, Zambia, South Africa, Yemen, etc. do.

Hugh Laurie vs. Olivia Wilde vs. Kal Penn vs. Robert Sean Leonard vs. Peter Jacobson

2009-02-27T19:16:00.000-08:00

Someone on a thread at the German DrHouseForum.de forum asked why Robert Sean Leonard was not included in my face-off. The short answer is of course that Google Insights for Search doesn't allow more than five terms for comparison. Anyway, today I compared the other four main characters of House M.D. against Hugh Laurie so that some measure of comparison with the first House M.D.'s face-off is possible.

Remember that Wilde, Penn and Jacobson only joined the TV show in late 2007. Nevertheless Leonard really didn't score very well in Google-popularity even compared with the second-draft "ducklings." Undeserved in my opinion. Wilde scored particularly well both due to her pre-House M.D. popularity and the peak surpassing even Laurie twice in size in September 2008. The former is explained by her role in the TV show The O.C. while the latter is linked with her increased screen time due to her relationship with Dr. Foreman on the medical procedural. Penn too had some earlier renown from his many appearances on TV and in movies, esp. Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. Let's have a look at the country rankings for the actors in question:

Funny, Wilde who has both Irish and US citizenship wasn't particularly popular in Ireland but beloved in Canada. Penn, the son of Indian immigrants to the US, did score well in India. Note that Leonard's profile compared best with the first House M.D.'s post pattern: Hungary on no. 1, etc.

Hugh Laurie vs. Jennifer Morrison vs. Lisa Edelstein vs. Jesse Spencer vs. Omar Epps

2009-02-08T22:27:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the absence of posts... I am in the process of moving halfway across the US. Anyway, today I bring you a face-off of the main actors in the hit TV series House M.D.

As expected, the inimitable Laurie stuck out head and shoulders above the others. Morrison was a clear second. The no. 3 spot was shared by Edelstein and Spencer but notice that the former has become much more Google-popular than the latter since the end of 2007. I'd say this was due to her increased profile on the show and the "demotion" of Morrison, Spencer and Epps. Morrison however didn't suffer much from her decreased screen time. Let's look at the actors' "standing" by country next:

Very interesting but also puzzling was Hungary scoring three no. 1s, a no. 2 and a no. 3. Why were/are Hungarians so crazy about House M.D.? Note also the high rankings of some other former East Bloc countries such as Estonia, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria. Overall, the actors were popular beyond the usual suspects: a worldwide phenomenon!

Car vs. Auto vs. Automobile vs. Motor Vehicle

2009-01-29T17:17:00.000-08:00

The US (still) is a car driven society... How do people in different regions address their motorized idols?

The general pattern was that car and auto dominated but were clearly no. 1 and 2, in that order. The other terms were way behind. Let's see the ranking of each term by states:

Car and auto saw little differentiation in regional usage patterns. Car was no. 1 in Florida and the least Google popular in Montana and Kentucky. The no. 1 state for automobile was Arizona while Louisiana came in last. Note that New Mexico was one of the lowest in marked contrast with its neighbor Arizona: odd! Alabama stuck the most with automobile, North Dakota the least. Finally, motor vehicle was most popular in New Jersey very closely followed by Arizona again. The term was least in use in the car maker state par excellence: Michigan.

Joni Mitchell vs. Björk vs. Jackson Browne vs. Ladytron vs. Roxy Music

2009-01-26T23:56:00.001-08:00

Today, a face-off of five of my favorite musicians/bands.

Good old Joni Mitchell still ruled the roost most of the time. Björk surpassed her markedly twice, in 2004 at the occasion of her Medúlla album and in 2006 with her latest, Volta.

If I had to pick a favorite song for each musician/band, I'd select Joni Mitchell's Chinese Cafe, Björk's Violently Happy (Fluke Well Tempered), Jackson Browne's Before The Deluge, Ladytron's Play Girl and finally Roxy Music's In Every Dream Home A Heartache.

I finished with the country rankings for each:

The Beatles vs. The Rolling Stones vs. John Lennon vs. Paul McCartney vs. Mick Jagger

2009-01-15T22:00:00.000-08:00

I faced off the two classic rock bands and their lead men:

The Beatles, even though they no longer exist, were more than twice as Google-popular as the Stones who still do. Similarly, the deceased Lennon trumped the others. But what about their respective country rankings?

Interesting: Argentina dominated in most terms. The UK was only interested in the individuals, not the bands. Latin America was especially into the bands. McCartney formed an exception in that he was foremost popular in Canada, the US and the UK.

Israel vs. Lebanon vs. Gaza vs. Palestine

2009-01-13T09:14:00.000-08:00

Today, a Google Insights look at the bloody history of a region of the world known all too well for the wrong reasons:

Yes, sadly and as expected, all peaks marked bloodshed: the 2006 Lebanon War, the current umpteenth Gaza "incursion" (sic), etc. All bloody depressing, predictable and actually preventable if common sense were to finally prevail...

Copyright Takver; CC Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic; "Home made placard from Melbourne [Australia] protest December 30, 2008 about Israel's attack on Gaza."

Christmas & New Year in Belgium: Dutch vs. French vs. English

2008-12-31T23:34:00.000-08:00

For New Year's Eve, I analyzed the Google search volume for Christmas and New Year-related terminology in Belgium's first (Dutch) and second language (French) as well as today's international lingua franca (English). This meant Kerst/Kerstfeest/Kerstdag/Kerstman vs. Noël (Christmas) vs. Nieuwjaar, vs. Nouvelle Année/Nouvel An (New Year) vs. Christmas/Santa Claus/New Year:

For Christmas, French won clearly while for the New Year Dutch narrowly beat out French. English was of course behind though when taking both holidays together not insignificant: Belgium is indeed becoming more and more international in its population and orientation. Why the two holidays showed opposite patterns as far as the primary languages were concerned was unclear. Maybe the search volume just wasn't big enough. Anyway, let's have a look at the rankings for the different (groups of) terms as far as the 11 provinces were concerned—treating Brussels as a province for convenience's sake.

Yellow indicates a Dutch term or Dutch-speaking province while turquoise marks French terms and French-speaking provinces. The capital district of Brussels is bilingual. As expected, the Dutch terms came first in a Dutch-speaking province while the French ones did in a French-speaking province. The English terms were searched most in a Dutch-speaking province (Limburg) and Brussels. On average though, Antwerp won out, helped by its larger population; Walloon Brabant came in last due to its low population. In the bottom section of the table, I made a quick attempt to rework the ranking numbers taking the population in consideration. Interesting was here that while for the individual terms nothing changed, the average now saw Luxembourg as the winner and East Flanders as the loser.

Christmas vs. Halloween vs. Easter vs. Thanksgiving vs. Valentine's Day

2008-12-27T23:23:00.000-08:00

My yummy Christmas dinner is almost digested ;-) Time to check on the old Yuletide's status in comparison with the other big—esp. in the US—holidays.

As expected, each holiday had its own seasonal peak and Christmas had the biggest one. Second was Halloween: everyone likes to dress up... Easter peaked in March-April (not fixed in the normal sense). Note that Canada's Thanksgiving Day in October was dwarfed by the US one in November. Valentine's Day was last. Let's have a look at the country rankings for each holiday:

The results were more or less as expected. A few observations: Halloween with its Celtic roots was also important in Ireland (no. 3) and even in Belgium (no. 6)—as a Belgian, I have actually no clue why that would be; of course, I haven't lived there in decades. Why Easter registered so heavily in Australia (no.1) and New Zealand (no. 3) was also kind of puzzling. That Thanksgiving registered at all outside the US and Canada might provide further proof of the supersized influence of esp. the US in the world. South African Googlers were the second-most interested in Valentine's.

Photo Copyright j_wijnands, CC Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic

Top 5 non-social blog-memetrackers: Technorati vs. Blogdex vs. Techmeme vs. Daypop vs. Memeorandum

2008-12-23T23:34:00.000-08:00

Today, a look at web sites that aggregate/rank blog memes, sometimes called memetrackers. However, I excluded the social media sites where the content is determined by people's votes, e.g., Digg. Some no longer exist but were influential in the past: Blogdex and Daypop. The current leading non-social memetrackers are memeorandum, Techmeme, Technorati.

Guess what: Technorati obliterated all the others. However, it is also a very popular blog search site which probably explains the distortion. Note how it saw a steep climb between 2004 and 2007, the latter being its zenith. Anyway, let's leave out Technorati and get more meaningful results:

First was Blogdex, now defunct. It displayed the opposite trend of Technorati: a steep decline. Second was Techmeme which only started in 2006 but quickly overpowered all others. Next came Daypop which experienced a continuous decline into oblivion like Blogdex, just not as precipitous. Memeorandum has declined somewhat from its late 2005 peak but still finished second. Let's have a look at the country rankings for each term, starting with Technorati:

The top 3 was Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines. Then came Indonesia and the US was only fifth. Interesting! How about Blogdex?

It was almost uniquely Googled by people in the US, Canada and the UK. Maybe blogs were just not common elsewhere in 2004-2005? Not sure about that. Next, Techmeme:

The US came first, followed by India and Canada. This memetracker has an IT tech focus which potentially explains India's rank. It was remarkable that Southeast Asia, so prominent with Technorati, didn't even figure in the top 10. What were the rankings for Daypop?

I saw the exact same pattern as for Blogdex (1. US, 2. Canada, 3. UK) with one exception: France joined in on no. 4. Again though, no other countries were really interested in Daypop. Finally: memeorandum.

This one had an identical pattern as Blogdex: 1. US, 2. Canada, 3. UK, and almost nothing behind those.

Guantanamo vs. Habeas Corpus vs. Rendition vs. Waterboarding vs. Wiretapping

2008-12-21T23:55:00.001-08:00

Still-vice-president Cheney is making some news as of late with his blunt defense of the excesses of the Bush administration. I faced off a few terms considering only US Googlers:

The prison camp in Guantanamo came out on top overall. The highest peaks however were noted for waterboarding. Wiretapping didn't register much. How were the state rankings?

The District of Columbia, the center of the federal government, came in first every time. Virginia where among others the CIA is headquartered made two appearances (Guantanamo and habeas corpus). The other DC neighbor, Maryland, was second for habeas corpus and wiretapping. Most surprising was the presence of South Dakota (rendition) and Utah (waterboarding).

Highest death toll from recent conflicts: Congo, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Burundi and Somalia

2008-12-17T13:33:00.000-08:00

Using the estimates of the Political Economy Research Institute (Univ. of Mass.), I established the countries with the top 5 deadliest recent or ongoing conflicts in the world; in order of numbers of dead, they are Congo (Kinshasa), Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Burundi. How did they fare in a Google Insights for Search face-off?

Basically, Iraq overpowered all others, mostly due to the May 2004 peak. By the way, the top 3 countries interested in Iraq were Lebanon, the US and Uganda. To get more meaningful results, I then took Iraq out and added the next deadliest country: Somalia.

Afghanistan was first, then came both Congo and Sudan. The latter displayed the only peak of the graph and well in February 2005. Burundi invoked little Googling.

Again using PERI's estimates, I gathered the no. of dead, the dead as % of population as well as the relative Google-popularity scores (I extrapolated Iraq):

First, I plotted no. of dead against dead as % of population, using the Google-popularity score to determine the size of the bubbles:

Note that the polynomial trend line is a pretty good fit. For most countries, a higher no. of dead meant a higher dead as % of population. Congo, however, was the obvious exception. Next, I bubble-plotted no. of dead against relative Google-popularity (bubbles determined by dead as % of population):

The trend line didn't fit well at all this time; but this was probably due to Iraq being an outlier because of extreme interest, comparatively speaking, in Anglo-Saxon countries that were also the most actively involved in the country. So maybe we should've excluded Iraq?

The correlation was now good, very similar to the first bubble graph. Congo was again a bit of an exception. Finally, I plotted relative Google-popularity against dead as % of population with the bubble size reflecting the no. of dead:

While leaving the Iraq outlier out, we obtained the best-fitting trend line of all bubble graphs. In other words, Google-popularity and dead as % of population were highly correlated.

Bankruptcy vs. Inflation vs. Recession vs. 1930s vs. Layoffs

2008-12-14T23:10:00.000-08:00

Today, I compared the Google-Popularity of some terms that come up a lot in this time of recession:

No.1, bankruptcy, was huge in 2004-2005, then fell somewhat but stayed on top and was again rising this year. The second most Googled word was inflation. Recession was generally low but saw a huge but brief peak in January 2008. Toward the end of the year it had climbed higher again, even surpassing inflation. Note that 1930s actually had a higher search volume in 2004-early 2006 than in 2008. It always displayed a seasonal pattern with a low during the summer.

Let me give you a quick rundown of the country top 3 for each term:

The US appeared in four out of five top 3's. The exception, inflation, had South Africa as no.1, followed by India and Singapore. India actually figured also frequently: three times. 1930s was more an "Anglo-Saxon" phenomenon.

Marriage vs. Divorce

2008-12-13T23:22:00.000-08:00

I faced off marriage/wedding and divorce.

Marriage was much more Google-popular than divorce, no surprise there. Note the seasonal pattern: the summer was the peak season every year while December was the low point. How about we see which countries were most interested in wedded bliss?

The top 3 was: South Africa, the US and Trinidad and Tobago. The latter was interesting: did a lot of Americans and Europeans maybe get married in this sunny, tropical holiday destination? The antithesis then:

In the US, South Africa and Canada, more people used Google to inform themselves about divorce than in other countries. Trinidad and Tobago made it in the top 10 again: no. 8.

Fidel Castro vs. Osama Bin Laden vs. Hugo Chavez vs. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vs. Kim Jong-il

2008-12-05T15:50:00.000-08:00

Today, a face-off of George Bush's "bogeymen" that are likely to outlast him in a position of power. First, I analyzed the US:

He may be the oldest and in bad health, but Castro was still tops together with Bin Laden. Chavez had a lot less web search volume and Kim was of little interest—or hardly anyone knows how to spell his name maybe? The peaks were pretty obviously linked to events such as Castro's illness and resignation, etc. I wondered if the graph would be much different when considering worldwide searches:

The only relevant difference lay in Bin Laden's reduction in Google-popularity. Let's look at the top 5 of countries that are interested in each "bogeyman":

Bin Laden's 5th country was Honduras: odd. Norway and Portugal were also not what you'd expect for Ahmadinejad and what's with Finland and Kim?

United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, (Great) Britain in the US

2008-11-30T16:53:00.000-08:00

I investigated a little bit further along the lines of my "United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain and Italy in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian" posts 1 and 2. This time, I faced off the same five European countries but only among US Googlers:

France was no. 1, followed by Italy. It was however odd that the UK with whom Americans share a common language and are culturally and politically closely linked, came in dead last. As mentioned before, France's recurring summer peak was due to the Tour de France. Let's have a look at the state rankings for interest in the five countries, beginning with the UK:

Among this smaller volume of searches, DC, New York and Illinois stood out. Mississippi came last. How about France?

The top 3 consisted of DC, New York and California. South Dakota came in dead last. Just like with the UK, the political and trade ties probably pushed DC to the top. Louisiana, which you would expect to be interested in France, didn't make the top 10. Next, Germany:

Michigan led for this country, followed by Wisconsin and DC. Could this have something to do with a larger share of German-Americans in the first two states? Louisiana thought the least about Germany. Then came Spain:

New York led, New Jersey was a close second and third was Florida. The pattern seemed to correlate with the distribution of Hispanics in the US. Oklahoma ended up last. Finally, Italy:

For Italy, it was New York, Connecticut and then New Jersey. South Dakota didn't care much for the Mediterranean "boot." I was still puzzled about the low score for the UK though: maybe "the United Kingdom" was a tad too bureaucratic a term, not what people type into the Google search box? I tested this theory by comparing the constituent parts of the UK:

England blew the competition as well as the UK out of the water: more than 13 times higher Google-popularity than the UK. Northern Ireland barely registered. A caveat however was apparent when looking at the state rankings: the New England states made up the top 6, in other words, a lot of the hits may be for the New England region rather than England.

One more test: I faced off Britain, Great Britain (also often used terms) and the UK:

Britain was tops, Great Britain was last. The term Great Britain—from which the automobile country code "GB" is derived—covers England, Wales and Scotland. The full name of the UK is actually the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Why is Britain "great"? Originally, "greater" distinguished it from "lesser" Britain, i.e., Brittany in France. Remember William the Conqueror and the French connections? Later, it was used to cement the union of England and Scotland. Britain in its proper use is then the geographical entity of the island containing Scotland, Wales and England. Of course, common usage conflates all this ;-)

United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain and Italy in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian (Part 2)

2008-11-27T23:45:00.000-08:00

In part 1, I faced off the search volumes of five versions of the names of the five big European countries. Today, I compared each time four European countries plus the US as far as the Google-popularity of a fifth European country was concerned. I started with the UK:

The UK was most popular in Spain, twice as much as in the US and Italy. France and Germany closed the rankings. My guess would be that this was caused by the larger contingent of British tourists in Spain. Note that I put the US in place of the search-term country. After all, a country name being most popular in its own territory didn't need proving but a comparison with the search patterns in the US could provide a nice study in contrast. Next, France:

France was most popular by far in the UK—a sentiment that was not returned as we saw above... Americans were the least interested in France. All searchers though were most interested in the summer: Tour de France time! Just like with the UK, popularity is generally in decline. Then came Germany:

All Europeans were about as much interested in this country, the US lagged a bit behind. Italy narrowly won this one. The 2006 World Cup soccer was again clearly visible, esp. in soccer-crazy Spain and Italy. So, how about Spain?

The interest in this country was staggered perfectly, from the top score in the UK (returning the favor; see above under the UK) to the least interested Italians. Americans came out one step above Italy. I wonder whether the UK trend line showed their vacation season, beginning at Christmas and lasting through the summer. The French and to a lesser extent the Germans also vacation in Spain but mostly in the summer only. Strangely, Americans were less into Spain during the summer... Finally, Italy:

One more time, the Europeans more or less agreed while the US lagged behind some. The summer 2006 peak was caused by the Azurri (Italian national soccer team) winning the World Cup in Germany.

United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain and Italy in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian (Part 1)

2008-11-25T23:48:00.001-08:00

Today I faced off the five most populous countries of the European Union but not against each other. Instead, I investigated the Google-popularity of their names in the five main languages. Note that I kept the order of the languages the same for each country: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian. Let's start with the United Kingdom:

As expected, the English version of the name was by far the most common but was also diminishing in volume at a rapid and sustained pace. Spanish came in second; Italian, French and German barely registered in comparison—remember that the numbers on these Google Insights for Search graphs are relative, not absolute, i.e., not reflecting real volume numbers but only how the different search terms differ in search volume. Next, France:

We had two complications here: the English and French versions of the name were identical and so were the Spanish and Italian ones. In both cases, I kept the two languages on the graph even though only one of the trend lines was visible, that line being the sum total of the two languages' search volume. That way, the language color codes didn't change from graph to graph. Anyway, France was king and it didn't matter whether the French or the English version was what drove this line because the other three languages were so small in volume that they would have been behind even if it were possible to split up the English and French searches. The Tour de France cycling extravaganza produced the annual summer peak (see also my August 9, 2008 post). How about Germany?

This time, I had solid evidence for the native tongue normally being on top: Deutschland bested Germany. Both were decreasing through time. The one time English won out was in June 2006 when even Italian almost caught up with German. The reason: the World Cup soccer took place in Germany that year, mostly in June. The smaller uptick later on was Euro 2008, the European soccer championship. Do we need anymore proof that soccer is king in Germany? :-) This in contrast to France where cycling is king (see above). Next, Spain:

The pattern continued: the native language bested English and both declined through time. Italians had little affinity with Spain. Finally, I analyzed Italy:

One more time we had an "identical twin": Italia is both the Italian and the Spanish name for the country. Of course then, Italian + Spanish bested English. Just like with Spain, there was at least some search volume from the other languages too: I wonder if this might be due to both countries being favorite tourist destinations?

Update: Don't forget to read part 2.

Hot vs. Cold vs. Wet vs. Dry

2008-11-23T00:04:00.000-08:00

I analyzed the Google-popularity of four characteristics which are used to differentiate the Greek classical elements (see yesterday's post). Look at the diagram on the right: in Greece at least, the air was hot and wet, water was wet and cold, the earth was cold and dry, and fire was dry and hot. So how did they fare as far as Google search volume was concerned?

Picture Copyright en:User:Heron, Public Domain

Hot was "hot" and the other three were way behind. Not too interesting, maybe the country rankings per term offered more?

It looked like Americans were more concerned with cold and dry, more problematic than the other two. Note that the Netherlands were most worried about wet which makes sense, I guess, as they have been fighting to keep the sea out and their land dry for centuries. The whole Indian subcontinent was very focused on hot.

Air vs. Earth vs. Water vs. Fire

2008-11-22T23:09:00.000-08:00

Today, I investigated the four classical elements that, according to ancient Greek, Medieval, Renaissance, Hindu, Buddhist, Japanese, etc. cultural/philosophical traditions, combine in different proportions to account for everything in the world.

Air dominated this face-off. Earth came next but had an irregular trend line: it started the lowest, then went all the way to the top in September 2005 only to settle in second place. Water and fire completed the quartet. How about the country rankings for the four elements:

A few observations: the US seemed very interested in fire and water but not so much in air and even less in earth. Indicative of the stereotype of Americans maybe? Fire and water reign, two aggressive and antagonistic elements contrary to the more subtle earth and air. Maybe Americans are not well grounded (earth), always have big dreams (air)? ;-) Popular psychology, it's a funny thing. How to explain New Zealanders' fondness for air and then fire? They are dreamers with spunk? Haha, of course this is all rather simplistic. Still...

Update: See also the next post.

One vs. Two vs. Three vs. Four vs. Five

2008-11-19T22:59:00.000-08:00

Numbers are everywhere, aren't they? I had a look at the first five:

No. 1 was... one, clearly so. Hmm... Maybe we should include the actual digits too—Google Insights for Search counts only the numbers by themselves, i.e., 1 but not 102.

Lo and behold, two was now no. 1. Why would that be? Also, when I read the country rankings in the first analysis, Lithuania was first for one. Something tells me that there may be a Lithuanian word written "one" but with a different meaning. Then came the Philippines and the US. In the second graph, the top number, two or 2, was searched the most in Japan, followed by Estonia and Israel. Oh well...

Food & Drink Searches in the US, Canada, Germany, Russia, Italy, France, Brazil, Japan and India

2008-11-16T22:57:00.000-08:00

Today I looked at Google searches about food and drink collectively by a series of countries. What is more, I used the option to show trend lines for each year which should bring out seasonalities. I started with the US:

The two high points of the year were Thanksgiving (fourth Thursday of November) and Christmas. Next, Canada:

In Canada, Thanksgiving is celebrated on a different date: the second Monday of October. This was reflected in the trend lines. Surely, Christmas will also be the gastronomical top in Germany?

Indeed. Note the more gradual buildup toward Weihnachten though. Also, Easter was becoming more pronounced here. That holiday follows a complicated set of rules involving a lunisolar calendar and fell in the Western rite of Christianity on different dates: April 11, 2004; March 27, 2005; April 16, 2006; April 8, 2007; March 23, 2008. Let's go to a prime representative of the Eastern rite of Christianity: Russia.

Primarily because the Eastern rite doesn't follow the Gregorian calendar but instead still uses the Julian one, their Christmases do not always coincide with the Western ones: April 11, 2004; May 1, 2005; April 23, 2006; April 8, 2007; April 27, 2008. We did see a small increase at that time in 2004, 2007 and 2008 but not in the other years. It seemed like Easter wasn't as big a deal as in the Western rite. Christmas trumped everything. Next, Italy:

This displayed a more "multipolar" seasonality: Christmas and Easter, sure, but also mid-February and more. I guess it goes to show that Italians like to celebrate on many occasions—good for them! How about the other stereotypical bon vivants, France?

Besides Christmas, a peak in mid-August also showed. But more interesting was that the search volume went up dramatically in March 2008 as compared with the previous years. Odd. Off to South America I went to investigate Brazil.

Easter was almost as important as Christmas for Brazilians. I wondered what the mid-June increase stood for. It turns out that June 12 is the Dia dos Namorados, a kind of Valentine's Day. Note the more or less increasing search volume through the years. How about Japan?

Even though this country isn't really much Christian, Yuletide was most noticeable in the seasonal trends. It has become kind of a secular, imported holiday. Second most important was early June which I wasn't able to link to any specific holiday or festivity. Does anybody have an idea? Finally, I did an analysis of India:

I couldn't observe any noticeable seasonal peaks in Google searches for food and drink. However, there was a remarkable peak in September 2007. Maybe this had to do with India winning the inaugural ICC World Twenty20 championship? I really don't know. Maybe somebody can help on this one too.

One more thing: I did a quick tally of the top 3 search terms in the analyzed countries, totaling all the occurrences:

Obviously, most people search the internet for recipes or for restaurants. Sushi occurred in the top 3 only in Russia (not Japan!), wine in Germany (not France!). Ramen though was only popular in Japan.

Flu vs. Asthma vs. Pneumonia vs. Bronchitis vs. Sinusitis

2008-11-12T22:37:00.000-08:00

Today, I heard on NPR about a new web site: Google Flu Trends. It lets you see where there is more search volume for flu in the US so you can track flu activity by state with comparison for previous years. In other words, this is a Google Insights for Search analysis presented with a more user-friendly interface. It made me think: maybe I should face-off five common diseases?

Worldwide, the flu virus dominated, followed by resp. asthma, pneumonia, bronchitis and sinusitis. The large peaks in October 2004 and October 2005 should correspond with serious flu epidemics. The seasonal aspect of the flu is well known: it occurs in winter. Pneumonia and bronchitis also showed small increases in winter. I proceeded to perform the same analysis for nine English-speaking countries/territories: Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, the UK and the US.

The winter of 2005-2006 was a significant peak for the flu in all these countries, other peaks displayed more variation. Some countries, e.g., Ireland and New Zealand, really only had one flu epidemic while for instance Canada and the US had a flu peak every winter. In India, the diseases' trend lines fell through time, perhaps reflecting better prevention and/or treatment through the years?

There is another way of looking at the data: by disease.

Note that the Philippines were no. 1 three times. Germany, Austria and the Netherlands popped up in the top 10 for bronchitis because the term was exactly the same in German and Dutch, unlike for other diseases.

Broadband penetration vs. Obama vote

2008-11-11T23:57:00.001-08:00

I was reading how the Obama campaign talked about the "net roots." How about we plot internet broadband penetration vs. Obama's percentage of the vote and well by state:

I added a perfect fit line that shows where the states would be if the two measures were perfectly correlated. The red linear trend line showed what the states actually turned to cluster around: it was not parallel, i.e., only a so-so correlation. I know that I probably should have used normalized numbers for both measures but I ran out of time. Still, I think this was very intriguing: it did seem to correlate not too badly. I identified the outliers on the Democratic side: DC (always heavily Democratic), Vermont (Socialist senator!) and Hawaii (Obama's childhood home state); on the Republican side: Alaska (Palin's home state), Utah (heavily Mormon) and Wyoming (Cheney's home state). These were expected. Look then for the states that displayed the best correlation between broadband penetration and Obama vote (from left to right): West Virginia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Montana, Missouri—still not officially settled!—, North Carolina, Ohio, Minnesota, Virginia, Oregon and New Jersey. They were a mixture of "toss-up" states (MO, NC, OH, VA) and "blue" (MN, OR, NJ) or "red" states (WV, MS, SC, MT). Note that the blue states were at the high end of the scale (to the right), the red ones at the bottom (to the left) and the toss-ups in the centre. Delaware (Biden's home state), Illinois (Obama's other home state) and Arizona (McCain's home state) ended up on their partisan side but not in an outspoken way.

I tried a second approach using the Obama minus McCain percentage of the vote:

The perfect fit line ran parallel to the blue trend line: a good correlation this time around. Overall, the distribution of the states was very similar to the previous graph. Conclusion: the higher the broadband penetration, the higher the Democratic vote seemed to be. I guess that does confirm some of the analyses of the election I read. Nevertheless, I have to caution to read too much in these graphs, the more since my grasp of this type of statistics is a bit shaky...

By the way, a "classic" face-off of broadband vs. Obama yielded this interesting result:

Broadband has been popular with Googlers for a long time. Obama was more a recent phenomenon that ended up overtaking broadband in aggregate.

Update 11-14-08: My statistical skills were indeed lacking. Look at the comments for corrections and the like.

NSF vs. NEA vs. USAID vs. NEH vs. IMLS

2008-11-09T21:33:00.000-08:00

I faced off five grant-making US government agencies: the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the Agency for International Development (USAID), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

The NSF was clearly in the lead, followed by the NEA and USAID. IMLS was at the bottom of Google-popularity. However, which one was decreasing or increasing its search volume? That was hard to see. I downloaded the data and plugged them into MS Excel. I made a graph of the cumulative weekly Google searches:

The lines were pretty smooth, in other words, none of the agencies saw extreme differences in search volume from one week to another. How about a graph showing the trend lines of the change percentage of the data of weekly Google searches?

Now I was getting somewhere: obviously, the IMLS experienced the highest increase on average, then the NSF and USAID. The other two showed a decline on average, with a small decline for the NEH and a larger one for the NEA. Getting back to Google Insights for Search, I had a look at how the searches were spread geographically. First, the NSF:

The top 3 states were New Mexico, District of Columbia and Maryland. Nevadans stood out for searching for the NSF the least. Next, the NEA:

The leader was here Arkansas! Not the state I would have most linked with the arts if you'd asked me. There must be an explanation for this: any suggestions? No. 2 was Alaska—also unexpected—followed by Vermont. Let's move on to USAID.

DC led big time as was expected, followed by Maryland and Virginia which also have a high concentration of federal government people concerned with international issues. North and South Dakota, Wyoming and West Virginia had no searches for USAID at all. How did the NEH fare?

DC, Rhode Island and Massachusetts were the most interested. The "zero-searchers" of USAID were joined by Nevada, Idaho and Montana. Finally, how did the distribution pattern of the IMLS look?

Strangely enough, Idaho was the clear leader! It was followed at some distance by DC and Maryland.

Fast Food Competition

2008-11-07T23:28:00.000-08:00

Today, a look at five major fast food chains: McDonald's vs. Kentucky Fried Chicken vs. Subway vs. Burger King vs. Taco Bell. I used the "Food & Drink" filter in Google Insights for Search.

McDonald's dominated, followed by the intertwined duo of Kentucky Fried Chicken and Subway that were switching position frequently. Next came Burger King and finally Taco Bell. Interestingly, the growth rate in Google-popularity seemed to decrease more and more from no. 1 to the last one: the field was more separated in the end than in the beginning. Let's show the country rankings for each chain, beginning with McDonald's:

The top 3 was Singapore, Australia and only then the US! How about KFC?

Singapore led again, then Hong Kong and Malaysia; the US didn't even make the top 10... Next, Subway:

This chain displayed a bit of a different pattern: 1. US, 2. Canada and 3. New Zealand. Still, Singapore was fifth. We moved on to Burger King:

The US loved this chain, followed by Germany and—you guessed it—Singapore. Finally, how did Taco Bell fare?

This time we had the US at the top again, then Costa Rica and Canada. Where was Singapore? In sixth place. Overall, Singapore was in the top 6 for all five chains while the US was in the top 3 each time except for its non-appearance in KFC's top 10.

John McCain vs. Barack Obama (Election Night Speeches)

2008-11-05T22:18:00.000-08:00

Last night, US president-elect Obama gave a victory speech in Chicago in front of a 100,000+ joyous crowd in Grant Park; McCain conceded in Phoenix on the back lawn of a luxury hotel with an at times bitter audience of 7,000. I followed the same methodology for their speeches as with the first, second and third presidential debates and the vice presidential debate; you can find some more detail about my methodology there. So let's start with the bubble graph displaying length of words, sentences as well as number of words:

Unsurprisingly, McCain kept it short in every way I measured. Using Wordle, I made all-inclusive word clouds.

John McCain

Barack Obama

McCain mentioned Obama quite a few times, he was after all conceding defeat. As the winner, Obama was looking more ahead, only mentioning his opponent in passing. McCain had many dominant words, esp. campaign, country, thank and variants on America. Obama was more focused with America, tonight, people and new standing out only.

Our voting experience

2008-11-04T10:25:00.000-08:00

Our polling place turned out to be a country club. This is the entrance of the domain, the white blob on the right is the overexposed "Vote Here" sign. Especially welcoming is of course the "Members Only" sign. This Club is way up in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains, very hard to reach if you don't have a car. Why are these kind of polling locations allowed? Especially since the primary vote took place in an easily accessible neighborhood church...

A close-up of the "Vote Here" sign at the entrance of the club building (multilingual, this is California after all):

NO on Proposition 8 in California

2008-11-03T16:44:00.000-08:00

Just a quick note: if you're reading my blog in California, you are very likely to see ads for the California Prop. 8 appear between posts. I want to make it perfectly clear that these ads are placed by Google AdSense and are in no way screened or approved by me. These ads I see are actually lying: it is not true that the Obama-Biden presidential ticket supports Prop. 8 as they are very clearly suggesting. Obama is on the record as opposed to anti-gay Prop. 8. For what's it worth, I am a strong opponent of Prop. 8 myself and urge all my CA readers to vote no on Prop. 8.

Obama vs. McCain vs. Palin vs. Biden in the Last Month: Details

2008-11-02T20:15:00.000-08:00

A post on the FiveThirtyEight.com blog (Google Traffic Suggests McCain Not Grabbing Voters' Attention) today looked up the Google-popularity of McCain and Obama, using Google Trends. The author wondered about the context of the Obama searches: maybe they were people looking for dirt, i.e., "proof" for the many slanderous allegations? Well, there's a way to a least get an idea of that and more: use Google Insights for Search
—my standard analysis tool.

I also included Palin and Biden to complete the presidential election picture. This graph showed again that Obama has been in the lead for the past month. Palin at times peaked higher than Obama and was most of the time more Google-popular than McCain. Except for his vice presidential debate, Biden led a quiet life out of the big spotlight ;-) Now, let's have a look at the details underlying this graph. First, the geographical differences for the candidates; then the context of the candidates' searches.
I started with Obama's regional search patterns:

The following states were the most interested in him: New Mexico, Colorado and North Carolina. The remainder of the top 10 were also seen as battleground states at one time or another, except of course the District of Columbia and Illinois. How was McCain's list?

Ohio, New Mexico and Pennsylvania led the top 10. Further down though, the battleground states didn't dominate with McCain: only three more. Furthermore, his home state Arizona wasn't in the top 10. Interesting... Next: Palin.

Her top three was made up of Alaska, Vermont and Oregon: all non-battleground states. In the remaining seven there was similarly only one state that could be called a battleground (Colorado). This seemed to point at her appeal being more as a celebrity than in the strict context of the campaign. Finally, where was Biden the most searched?

Delaware, Vermont and Alaska led his list. Maybe a lot of people in Alaska were trying to find out what their governor was up against? The only battleground state the Democratic VP candidate was Google-popular: Pennsylvania. he has been campaigning a lot there if I'm not mistaken.

In conclusion, Obama was the one who evoked he highest interest in the battleground states. That being said, in what light was he being searched: positive or negative? Here's the list of most common search terms for Obama:

The top 10 was basically positive with searches focusing on the race, polls and debates. The second list on the right shows the "rising" searches, i.e., searches that saw the fastest growth spurt but were not in the top 10. Nos. 4-8 were rather negative: (false) accusations of him not being qualified in a legal sense to run, the ACORN voter registration fraud allegations, the tenuous connection with a '60s terrorist. All in all, the rising searches displayed a half positive (Powell, ...), half negative interest. Republican mud-slinging had only a limited impact. On to his opponent, McCain:

His top 10 was similar to Obama: positive. The "risers" were also all basically positive. Next, Palin.

Five of her top 10 searches related to Tina Fey's parody of her on Saturday Night Live. I don't think that can be classified unequivocally as positive. The other five were the typical contexts of the campaign, debate, etc. When it came to rising searches, about half of them to had a connection with SNL. Last but not least ;-) , Senator Biden...

A basic, positive top 10 was accompanied by as much as four rising searches about the SNL sketch parodying the VP debate.

Clearly, the searches were mostly about the campaign except for some following up on accusations against Obama and regarding the Palin SNL saga.

Dick Cheney vs. Condoleezza Rice vs. Donald Rumsfeld vs. Alberto Gonzales vs. Michael Chertoff

2008-11-01T23:38:00.000-07:00

As we are in the waning days of the George W. Bush administration, I thought it might be worth to have a look at some important, also at times controversial cabinet members.

Overall, Cheney had the highest Google-popularity. Then came Rice, Rumsfeld, Gonzales and Chertoff. When I looked a little closer though, Cheney's ranking had a lot to do first with the 2004 presidential election campaign and the February 2006 shooting incident—while hunting, he carelessly but accidentally shot an elderly friend in the face, neck and torso; the friend then apologized for the inconvenience... Rice's peaks fell in April 2004 (refusal and eventual testimony before the 9/11 Commission), November 2004 (presidential election) and February 2005. The latter peak is harder to explain. It might have had something to do with the State of the Union address and/or the subsequent withdrawal of North Korea from talks. Rumsfeld caught the attention of Googlers esp. in May 2004 and November 2006 (his forced resignation). The former peak may have been caused by the arguments before the US Supreme Court in the Hamdi v. Rumsfeld case about the constitutionality of the government's withholding due process of law from a US citizen. It is interesting to note that Gonzales' resignation in September 2007 did not lead to much extra Googling. His credibility had been suffering, caused by among other matters his disastrous July testimony about NSA domestic eavesdropping before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He was then the subject of several attempts to pass no-confidence motions in Congress and eventually was forced to resign. In other words, maybe there's no peak because matters were stretched out over several months. Finally, Chertoff's most significant peak (January 2005) preceded his installation as Secretary of Homeland Security.

Copyright vs. Trademark vs. Royalties vs. Intellectual Property in the UK, the US, Germany, Belgium and France

2008-10-30T23:17:00.000-07:00

Today, a non-US-elections-related post... I faced off copyright-related terms: copyright (droit d'auteur/Urheberrecht/auteursrecht(en)) vs. trademark (marque déposée/Marke/eingetragenes Ware/handelsmerk/merk) vs. Royalties (redevance(s)/Abgabe(n)) vs. intellectual property (propriété intellectuelle/geistiges Eigentum/intellektuelles Eigentum/intellectueel eigendom). I did this for the UK, the US, Germany, Belgium and France. I included the translation of the terms in French, German and Dutch in the Google Insights for Search analysis when applicable so as to get a more accurate picture. First, I faced off the different countries for copyright:

There was the most interest in copyright in the UK, the least in France. A November 2004 peak in the UK could be observed: I don't know why. Over the 2004-now time span, Google-popularity went down in every country however. How about trademark?

This time, Belgians were the most interested, the French again the least. The UK was markedly less into trademark than copyright while Belgium was vice versa. I wonder if this had to do with different legislative traditions? It could also be that Marke and merk are too generic. I redid this analysis without those two terms:

This did change the situation. The US were now clearly the most interested in trademark and Germany and Belgium ended up much lower. Again, all countries' trend lines declined through time. Next, royalties:

France was no. 1 and this was substantially due to a big peak in October 2005. This time too, I wasn't able to ascertain why. There is no real Dutch term for royalties, the English word is commonly used. The US scored the lowest for this term. Looking at the evolution of the trend lines January 1, 2004 through now, the downward trend was esp. noticeable in France but the UK, the US and Germany also saw declines. Belgium on the other hand saw a slight increase. Finally, let's look at the intellectual property graph:

The US and the UK basically shared the lead while German Googlers cared the least for geistiges Eigentum. All countries lost interest between 2004 and now.

It seemed to me that obtaining country graphs for the four terms together would be useful. I started with the UK:

Copyright towered over the three other terms, even when not counting the big November 2004 peak. Next, the US:

Copyright again ruled, intellectual property was the least interesting. Let's look at Germany next:

Copyright and trademark were at the top, intellectual property hardly showed. However, when we took out the too generic term Marke, the graph changed drastically:

Copyright was alone in charge now, both trademark and intellectual property held hardly any interest. Then I analyzed Belgium:

Trademark was no. 1, intellectual property was in the doldrums. I eliminated merk again:

Copyright dominated while trademark almost disappeared; even intellectual property scored higher. At long last, I investigated the data for France.

Royalties won out in la douce France, trademark hardly existed. Intellectual property held some interest.

Winner vs. Loser vs. Winning vs. Losing Worldwide and in the US, the UK and Australia

2008-10-28T23:09:00.000-07:00

With the coming US elections only a week away, I compared the Google-popularity of four words that will be on everybody's lips...

As expected, winner and winning were victorious in their respective face-offs. There were some differences too though. Winner had an annual May peak while winning had only one clear peak, in August 2004. I don't have a good explanation for either. Loser and losing also were different in that loser showed outspoken peaks while losing was basically flat. Loser's peaks were not seasonal however. On the other hand, winner and loser were both peaking but not at the same time or in any way related. Again a puzzling result. Winning and losing had more in common: both resulted in more or less flat trend lines. How about checking out this foursome in the US only?

The results were quite similar to the worldwide graph as far as the relationships between the different pairs went. I guess this showed one more time how the US Googling public is in the driver's seat regarding the rankings, esp. when searching for English words. Next, the UK yielded this graph:

Surprise: winner vs. loser was much more lopsided, and loser had no real peaks. A May-August-December annual peak pattern for winner dissipated in 2007. Hmm... Finally, I looked into Australia:

Here, winner barely edged out loser overall. Also, the loser trend line was the only one of the four with astounding peaks, surpassing all other trend lines.

Australia vs. Europe vs. Africa vs. Asia vs. Antarctica

2008-10-26T00:47:00.000-07:00

Today, I faced off the five continents except for (the) America(s)—the latter would distort everything due to the US commonly being called "America." Also, I used Australia instead of Oceania as that is the more common usage at least in the US; Oceania by the way only received an overall 1% anyway.

Australia was the clear winner of this Google-popularity contest even though it saw a continuing decline. The caveat of course being that the term coincides with a country which may not be "fair" to compare with real continent names (see America above). Europe was also losing "market share." Antarctica was really of little interest. The only time when there was a peak in any of the trend lines was at the end of 2004: the catastrophic tsunami in the Indian Ocean region caused Asia to get a bump.

Osama Bin Laden vs. Taliban vs. IED vs. Al-Qaeda vs. Suicide Bomber

2008-10-24T23:29:00.000-07:00

Today, I investigated to what extent Googlers in the US were interested in some of the lethal enemies of the country since 2004:

Bin Laden was no. 1, nothing surprising there. Then came the Taliban who harbored him and is now resurgent in Afghanistan. Next I found the infamous Improvised Explosive Devices (IED; US Army-speak for road bombs) and Al-Qaeda—I'd expected the latter to score higher. Last but not least was the suicide bomber, the scourge of everyone in Iraq. Notice the peaks: Al-Qaeda in May 2004 and July 2005; Bin Laden in September-November 2004, September 2006 and September 2007 (9/11 remembrances; I don't know why 2005 is missing). The overall ranking order was the same as the current one. I also made a stacked graph using the Google Insights for Search data:

I'm not sure if this is better. What do you think? It's probably a little too granular because it was based on daily numbers. One thing was more clear in this graph than in the regular one: IED increased over time.

Three-day average interest in Obama and McCain by state and top cities

2008-10-22T17:11:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I was conducting an experiment that took a while to complete. That's why I skipped a day. I was looking into Google searches for Obama and McCain over the last three days available (10-16 through 10-18) on Google Insights for Search, and well split up by US state plus the District of Columbia. I experimented with different analyses and this is what I came up with:

The states are displayed alphabetically. Let's give them ranked according to Obama share too:

The interest in Obama was the highest in Missouri, then came Nevada, Wyoming, and so on. The lowest Google-popularity for Obama or highest one for McCain in this three-day time span was in Delaware, then North Dakota and Massachusetts. So did this mean that Obama was ahead in Missouri but behind in Delaware, opinion-poll-wise? Of course not. I think these graphs show a snapshot of the attention being paid to the two main presidential candidates, e.g., on October 18, Obama held a 100,000-people rally in St. Louis, MO. What is measured is more something like the "buzz," how much the candidates are being talked about. You might say that it reflected the cumulative effect of campaigning: TV, radio, robocalls, appearances, mail, etc.

The analysis also yielded the top cities where people were looking for information on the candidates during the sam time span:

This confirmed my theory that the huge St. Louis Obama rally spiked Missouri: St. Louis was no. 1 for Obama. Second came Houston and then Tampa. McCain had the highest score in Boston, then San Francisco and Seattle. It seemed to me that these had more to do with Obama being so far ahead that people weren't thinking about the candidates much anymore.

2009 NEA Jazz Masters

2008-10-20T22:58:00.000-07:00

Last Friday, the US National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) celebrated its 2009 Jazz Masters: George Benson, Toots Thielemans, Lee Konitz, Jimmy Cobb, Snooky Young and Rudy Van Gelder. The latter is actually a recording engineer so that left me with five musicians to face off:

Benson totally outranked the other four but this was because he is also or even more so a mainstay of pop/rock music. Thielemans was second, closely followed by Konitz. Cobb and Young barely registered among the Googling crowd. I tried to enhance the discriminating power by leaving out Benson:

This graph basically confirmed the first one. The trend lines didn't cross. So I went back to my first analysis and looked at the regional interest information, first for Benson:

Surprisingly, he scored the highest by far in Georgia (the country, not the US state!), followed by Indonesia and South Africa. I am at a loss how to explain this. Maybe a Benson fan can enlighten me? The US wasn't even in the top 10! Next, Thielemans:

Jean-Baptiste Frédéric Isidor "Toots" Thielemans is my personal favorite—I'm Belgian after all ;-) —and naturally got the highest Google-popularity in Belgium, his native country where he even received the title of baron in 2001, a rare honor for an artist. I include a great picture of him playing his harmonica. He expanded its range and versatility as nobody else before him. In that he reminds me of another jazz late great of Belgian extraction, Django Reinhardt, who also played an instrument not normally associated with jazz at that time, viz. the guitar. Thielemans' second country was The Netherlands, then came Hungary. Again, the US didn't get in the top 10. Let's see what I found for Konitz:

Konitz was the second American to be more Google-popular abroad than in the US, this time Italy took the honors. The US did come in eighth. Then I checked on Cobb:

There was very little data for this musician but for what it's worth this was the top 3: the US, South Africa, Vietnam. Finally, how about Young?

He had the same paucity of data as well as the same top 3.

The "Social Sins": Anti-War vs. Anti-Abortion vs. Anti-Racism vs. Anti-Poverty vs. Anti-Torture

2008-10-19T22:52:00.000-07:00

Denver Roman Catholic Archbishop Charles Chaput recently shattered the wall supposedly separating Church and State in the US ("Obama the 'most committed' abortion-rights major-party presidential candidate since the landmark Roe v. Wade decision on abortion in 1973."). He was of course not the first prelate to do so, his companions were among others former St. Louis, now Vatican Archbishop Raymond L. Burke (Democratic Party = "party of death"), St. Louis Bishop Robert J. Herman (coming election = "Judgement Day"), Dallas Bishop Kevin Farrell and Fort Worth Bishop Kevin Vann ("The reading of the letter during Mass on Sunday at Holy Trinity Church in downtown Dallas prompted about two dozen parishioners to walk out."), etc. Progressive Catholics are pushing back against these prelates' myopic obsession with abortion, e.g., Lisa Sowle Cahill (Professor of Theology at Boston College), Douglas Kmiec (Professor of Constitutional Law at Pepperdine University, former head of the Office of Legal Counsel for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush), Cathleen Kaveny (Professor of Law and Theology at the University of Notre Dame), Nicholas P. Cafardi (former dean of the Duquesne University School of Law in Pittsburgh; recently de facto forced to resign as trustee of Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio), etc.

In light of all this, I thought it useful to face off the attention some of the most commonly cited "social sins" had been getting from Googlers.

I widened the search to include the "against ..." phrases so as to try to account for all the Google-popularity. Worldwide, anti-war was very dominant, even more so in the early years when the Iraq War was still more in the news. Anti-abortion was a steady second and just this month overtook anti-war. Note the anti-racism high peak in February 2005. Let's have a closer look at each "social sin" now, starting with anti-war:

Interest was the highest by far in the US and from the top searches we learnt that the Iraq War indeed was mostly the context. How about anti-abortion?

Abortion was a major concern in the US and the Philippines. Supposedly hyper-Catholic Ireland didn't even show up in the top 10. Among the top and rising searches, I counted six that were looking for arguments against abortion, only three were "pro-life," i.e., interested in the opposite, and the majority (5) were neutral. Next, anti-racism:

Ireland was the clear leader, followed by the UK and Canada. The large interest in racism in Ireland might have had something to do with the aftermath of the "2004 Citizenship Referendum, in which, at a majority of four to one, the Irish electorate voted for the removal of birth-right citizenship to children of migrants." The US only came in at no. 7. I guess we've solved all our problems in that area ;-) What about the context of the searches? Soccer leagues organized campaigns, the music world got involved, Nike jumped on board, etc. The anti-poverty platform showed the following geographical pattern:

The Philippines was again no. 1, followed by Canada and Ireland. The US lagged far behind at no. 8. Finally, I reproduce the geography and context of anti-torture:

Hong Kong, Switzerland and Australia were most interested in the problem of torture. The US came out seventh but was actually not that far behind in absolute interest numbers. The UN Convention Against Torture, human rights, refugees and even cat torture formed the context.

Billboard Year-End Top Pop Artists 2004-2007

2008-10-18T23:18:00.000-07:00

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.

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

2008-10-17T23:48:00.000-07:00

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.

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

2008-10-16T20:27:00.000-07:00

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:

Golden Retriever
German Shepherd
Yorkshire Terrier
Labrador Retriever
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).

John McCain vs. Barack Obama vs. Bob Schieffer

2008-10-15T19:50:00.000-07:00

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).

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

2008-10-14T16:57:00.000-07:00

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:

youtube 375
yahoo 290
google 230
ebay 180
myspace 175
facebook 165
hotmail 130
msn 125
you tube 115
orkut 100
jogos 100
games 100
wikipedia 90
maps 70
gmail 60
my 55
craigslist 55
gmx 50
amazon 50
weather 45
mixi 45
dictionary 45
wetter 40
web 40
news 40
2ch 40
価格 40
test 35
楽天 35
地図 35
white pages 30
web.de 30
uol 30
telefonbuch 30
spiele 30
real estate 30
globo 30
bild 30
ニコニコ 30
yahoo mail 25
tradutor 25
terra 25
studivz 25
mapquest 25
cnn 25
baixaki 25
天気 25
westpac 20
wer kennt wen 20
tv guide 20
schülervz 20
routenplaner 20
qantas 20
mobile 20
leo 20
hotmail.com 20
frases 20
譬ｪ萓｡ 20
bebo 20
anz 20
ヤフー 20
yellow pages 15
yahoo.com 15
wkw 15
where is 15
walmart 15
vivo 15
utube 15
tre 15
telstra 15
target 15
spiegel 15
seek 15
red tube 15
optus 15
oi 15
nhk 15
nab 15
mensagens 15
icq 15
hi5 15
goo 15
freenet 15
firefox 15
espn 15
detran 15
db 15
commonwealth bank 15
claro 15
caixa 15
big day out 15
bank of america 15
asx 15
aol 15
鄙ｻ險ｳ 15
螟ｩ豌嶺ｺ亥ｱ 15
ノーベル賞 15
vagalume 10
tse 10
trading post 10
t-online 10
the age 10
tchibo 10
runescape 10
receita federal 10
postbank 10
otto 10
o2 10
ninemsn 10
netbank 10
net 10
myspace.com 10
myspace layouts 10
msnbc 10
miniclip 10
mercado livre 10
meinvz 10
jogos online 10
jogos de meninas 10
jetstar 10
jappy 10
jal 10
ig 10
hoyts 10
home depot 10
herald sun 10
google maps 10
gmx.de 10
驛ｵ萓ｿ逡ｪ蜿ｷ 10
dmm 10
dicionario 10
deutsche bank 10
dax 10
das Örtliche 10
currency converter 10
concursos 10
club penguin 10
bom 10
bol 10
bigpond 10
bate papo 10
barack obama 10
börse 10
au 10
aol.com 10
ana 10
americanas 10
afl 10
大和生命 10
繝九さ繝九さ蜍慕判 10
youtube.com 5
you tube.com 5
xnxx 5
webkinz 5
tv programm 5
tim 5
southwest airlines 5
schuelervz 5
photobucket 5
pandora 5
oi torpedo 5
nikoniko 5
my space 5
msn.com 5
messenger 5
letras de musicas 5
kboing 5
jra 5
itau 5
horoscopo 5
gyao 5
google.com 5
globo.com 5
g1 5
fernsehprogramm 5
facebook login 5
貍ｫ逕ｻ鬢ｨ 5
deutsche bahn 5
cpz 5
cifras 5
caixa economica 5
bradesco 5
遏ｳ逕ｰ譛ｪ譚･ 5
邱呈婿諡ｳ 5
菴仙ｷ晄\･萓ｿ 5
荳画ｵｦ蜥檎ｾｩ 5
ユーチューブ 5
繝ｦ繝九け繝ｭ 5
繧｢繧ｲ繧ｵ繧ｲ 5
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.

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

2008-10-12T01:35:00.000-07:00

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.

Citigroup/Citibank vs. Wells Fargo vs. Wachovia

2008-10-10T16:34:00.000-07:00

Today it was announced that Wells Fargo, not Citigroup, will be buying floundering Wachovia. Just the latest story on Wall Street... Was it inevitable that Wells Fargo would win this battle? I faced the three financial institutions off against each other:

Worldwide, Citigroup/Citibank had the highest Google-popularity, only to be overtaken by the other two in September 2008. Hmm... It looked like Wells Fargo jumped ahead only due to the takeover rumors of Wachovia. The long-term pattern favored Citigroup though. But wait, this was a US event so maybe we need to study only US Google patterns?

Indeed, this time Wells Fargo was the undisputed leader with Citigroup even falling below Wachovia at mid-2005.

Color vs. Colour vs. Windshield vs. Windscreen in Australia, Canada, India, UK and US

2008-10-10T00:07:00.000-07:00

Today I faced off two words variants and then looked at their trends in the major English-speaking countries. First, we looked at color and colour, resp. the US and UK variants.

Worldwide, color was more Google-popular than colour. Color saw a decline but colour didn't. Then we investigated color in Australia, Canada, India, the UK and the US.

Color was popular in the US and on a lower level, a declining one at that, in Canada and India. At the bottom, the UK and the US are slowly declining too. Next, the graph for colour in the five countries:

Colour was actually most Google-popular in Australia, closely followed by the UK. India and Canada followed a tad behind. The UK may use some color even while colour is dominant, not so the US where colour really is an alien spelling.

The second word couple is windshield and windscreen:

Worldwide, windshield dominated. Let's look at windshield separately in the selected five countries:

The US was in the lead, followed at some distance by Canada. The UK, India and Australia barely knew the word. Finally, what about windscreen?

The UK and Australia are "crazy" about windshield, not so the other three countries. In conclusion, it is interesting that Canada leaned more toward the US than toward the UK in this admittedly limited test and this was more pronounced for the vocabulary variants than for the spelling variants. Australia leaned mostly toward the UK while India wasn't clearly closer to one English pole than the other.

Jay Leno vs. David Letterman vs. Jimmy Kimmel vs. Conan O'Brien vs. Craig Ferguson

2008-10-08T21:36:00.000-07:00

I faced off five late-night talk show hosts in the US.

Overall, Leno was king of late night though Letterman occasionally peaked higher. Both also displayed a slight downward trend whereas Kimmel and Ferguson were slowly gaining Google-popularity over the years. O'Brien's trend was the most stable. By the way, the best movie about the US late-night talk show phenomenon is The Late Shift.

Barack Obama vs. John McCain vs. Audience vs. Tom Brokaw

2008-10-07T21:36:00.000-07:00

The second US presidential debate took place tonight at Belmont University in Nashville, TN. I followed the same methodology as with the first debate 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:

Obama and McCain were again close though the latter used a bit shorter sentences. Remarkably, the audience questions contained the longest words, more even than Brokaw's. The moderator also spoke about twice as much as his colleague Jim Lehrer did in the first debate. While splitting up the text in the different speakers' parts, something caught my eye: Brokaw seemed to thank McCain a lot but not Obama. Just to make sure, I counted all speakers' instances of thanking somebody:

What stood out on this measure? McCain made it a point to thank the audience speakers and secondly thanked Brokaw quite a few times. He even thanked Obama 1.5 times—I counted a sarcastic "thank you" only half. Maybe McCain's expressions of gratitude reflected his being more formal and/or older? Or maybe he was trying to counter his rather stern if not grumpy behavior during the first debate? Obama on the other hand didn't thank many people. He thanked two audience questioners but was mostly business. He didn't thank McCain once. Maybe that was a reaction to criticism that he was bending over backwards to him too much during the first debate? Brokaw thanked McCain a lot more than Obama but neglected the audience too.

Finally, we made the "word clouds" again.

Barack Obama

John McCain

Audience

Tom Brokaw

I'll conclude with a few quick observations. Obama's no. 1 word tonight was "going," followed by "got," "Sen." and "McCain." Policywise, "health" and "energy" stood out. As for McCain, "know" was tops—invocations of experience? Then came "going," "Obama" and esp. "America(n)(s)." The audience very much stressed "economic"—remember "It's the economy, stupid!" from Clinton's first presidential campaign? As expected, Brokaw said "Sen." most, followed by "McCain" and then "Obama."

Movie vs. Film vs. Flick vs. "Motion Picture" vs. "Moving Picture"

2008-10-07T02:38:00.000-07:00

How about a face-off five different terms for a movie?

As expected, movie was most common, followed at quite a distance by film. The other three basically didn't figure in the graph. However, I think we can try to clarify this further: instead of the interest level, let's select the "growth relative to category" (i.e., entertainment) option.

Now we can see growth and decline of all five Google search terms/phrases. Growing from most to least were flick and motion picture. Film fluctuated but stayed at the same level almost. Going down were, from least to most, movie, motion picture and moving picture. I wonder whether these observations correspond with he linguistic evolution regarding which of the words gain and which lose "market share" in the standard vocabulary.

Wordle

2008-10-05T14:04:00.000-07:00

I realize now that I didn't use the superb Wordle online text analysis website properly: my bad! Of course, one should always read the instructions completely and go over the different settings before using any software. The default graph shows only 150 words but this can be changed. Also, one can, for instance, have the words arranged more or less alphabetically: this facilitates finding specific words. Here are the complete settings I'll be using from now on:

language:

remove nos.

remove common English words

font:

Teen

layout:

max. words: word count rounded up to the next thousand
prefer alphabetical order
rounder edges
horizontal

color:

Wordly
a little variance

The following three posts have now been amended with the improved "word clouds":

Sarah Palin vs. Joe Biden vs. Glen Ifill (10-2-08)
Barack Obama vs. John McCain vs. Jim Lehrer (9-26-08)
Michelle Obama vs. Joe Biden vs. Barack Obama vs. Sarah Palin vs. Cindy McCain vs. John McCain (9-4-08)

Library vs. Bibliothèque vs. Bibliotheek vs. Bibliothek in Canada, Belgium and Switzerland

2008-10-04T23:35:00.000-07:00

Today, a comparison involving multilingual countries and their Google searches for certain words. Let's begin with Canada:

Library totally dominated here although its popularity declined somewhat through time. In Canada, approximately 75% of the population speaks English and 25% French. When doing a Google Insights for Search test for the same word in both languages, limited geographically to internet users from Canada, one would expect to see proportional Google-popularity. For instance, we would expect to find library and bibliothèque in a 75%/25% proportion. Instead, the actual overall proportion (2004-present) was 94%/6%. Odd! However, the second test with bookstore/bookshop and librairie came out with a perfect 75%/25% split. I would guess that this inconsistency might have something to do with a too limited data set for Google searches in Canada, rather than a cultural distinction—Québequois don't like libraries... not likely. Still, it is puzzling. Anyone have any other ideas to explain this? I did the same search for Belgium (my native country):

This time, bibliotheek was most popular by far. Now, Belgium has about 60% Dutch-speakers and 40% French-speakers. The proportions of local Google searches were as follows: bibliotheek vs. bibliothèque (library) 83%/17% and boekwinkel/boekhandel vs. librairie (bookstore) 64%/36%. I again obtained one expected and one unexpected result, just like for Canada. The library pair proportion was off but the bookstore one was "correct." I tried one more country, Switzerland (only the two main languages out of the four):

Bibliothek was at the top. The Helvetian Federation's population consists of about 65% German-speakers, 20% French-speakers, 5% Italian-speakers, 1% Romansh-speakers and the remainder speakers of unofficial, immigrants' languages, e.g., Serbo-Croatian. For the sake of determining the proportions when facing off German and French equivalents, I recalculated the proportion of those two languages as if they were the only ones: 75%/25%. Bibliothek vs. bibliothèque (library) produced 63%/37% which was not too far off. Buchhandlung vs. librairie (bookstore) yielded 56%/44%. All words displayed a diminishing trend. In conclusion, Switzerland showed a different "proportionality" pattern than Canada and Belgium (library face-off not too bad & bookstore face-off not OK vs. library face-off not OK & bookstore face-off OK). Looking at it another way, Canada and Switzerland saw a search-quantity decline, Belgium didn't.

Update 10-6-08: I took the advice given to me on the LanguageHat blog and fixed the searches a bit. First, Canada:

No significant difference could be observed, except for a slightly higher occurrence of bibliothèque/bibliotheque. Next, Belgium:

Here the increase caused by adding the non-accented bibliotheque spellng was more significant: the library duo yielded an 81%/19% but this was still not close to the proportion of language speakers. Finally, Switzerland's new graph was as follows:

Both Buchhandlung/Buchladen and bibliothèque/bibliotheque grew. Bibliothek vs. bibliothèque/bibliotheque yielded a 64%/36% proportion, Buchhandlung/Buchladen" vs. librairie a 66%/34%. The first change doesn't seems meaningful to me; the second one does bring the numbers a bit closer to the language estmates. One final thing: the proportion of French-speakers in Canada is of course a matter of contention, I picked 25% as a reasonable number, esp. taking into consideration the "mixed" families.

Democratic Party vs. Republican Party vs. Green Party vs. Libertarian Party vs. Constitution Party (Part 3)

2008-10-03T21:40:00.000-07:00

This is the last part of a three-part series of posts (part 1, part 2). We explained the method used for this experiment, i.e., analyzing "toss-up" states in the US presidential election by comparing Google Insights for Search and Pollster.com graphs in part 1. We continue with Ohio:

For the first couple of months of this year, the Democratic Party (DP) was ahead in Google-popularity in this state while McCain was ahead in the regression trend line of the polls. For the rest of the year, the DP and Republican Party (RP) lines related to one another in the same way as the Obama and McCain trend lines: first the DP/Obama in the lead, then the RP/McCain. However, in September, Obama again gained the upper hand. The RP stayed in the lead though. I wonder if there isn't some kind of delayed effect in these case, or maybe the high-sensitivity trend lines for the candidates overreacted to recent polls? Now we turn our attention to Pennsylvania.

This state too was kind of puzzling: the parties' graph showed a DP advantage for most of the year except in September when the RP overtook them, only to end in a tie. On the candidates' graph, McCain was ahead till Obama overtook him in April; the latter then put a lot of distance between him and his opponent after some tightening in the beginning of September. This seems related to the Republican-convention a.k.a. Palin-announcement bounce for McCain and the current financial-crisis bounce for Obama (see also, for instance, Ohio above). Next is Virginia:

Similarly to Pennsylvania, the DP had the edge till the RP bested them in September. McCain however was ahead but lost more and more till the race turned into a dead heat in June. In September, the same Palin bounce and the financial-crisis bounces gave the advantage to Obama. Finally, I looked into Missouri, a state that has gone in and out of the "toss-up" category quite a few times. It was in McCain's camp when I started this series of posts but is again in contention.

The DP dominated till the RP took over in September. McCain was in the lead the whole year but it's now a tie. One more thing: Nader, Barr and McKinney are an afterthought in the polls. This is partially due to them often not being included in polls in the first place and, when they are, they don't appear in enough of them to survive Pollster.com's high-sensitivity smoothing filter. To be fair, let me give you briefly what their poll standings were today when using normal smoothing, as well as their parties' Google-popularity for 2008 so far (shorter period didn't yield good data):

I quickly tested the correlation between the two measures by producing scatter graphs with a linear regression trend line added (without the Constitution Party as I had no poll data for their candidate).

Quick conclusion: it looked like there was no correlation, in other words the Google-popularity of third parties couldn't be used to try to predict the third-party candidates Pollster.com scores or vice versa. Which probably means that we didn't miss out by not having them on all but one state poll graph after all.

Sarah Palin vs. Joe Biden vs. Glen Ifill

2008-10-02T22:47:00.000-07:00

I'm afraid that part 3 of the Democratic Party vs. Republican Party vs. Green Party vs. Libertarian Party vs. Constitution Party series of posts will have to wait till tomorrow. Tonight I watched the vice presidential debate at Washington University in St. Louis and of course I want to present you with my word analysis again (see previous posts on the first presidential debate and the convention speeches). I found the transcript and separated out the words spoken by Palin, Biden and moderator Ifill. Let's start with the bubble graph in which I summarize how many words, sentences and characters (excl. spaces) each speaker used:

Ifill didn't use a lot of words which makes sense as she was the moderator. However, her words were notably longer even though she spoke in short sentences. This seems a bit odd at first. The explanation lies in her word choice as moderator: her most common words were "governor" and "senator" (as we'll see below). Palin and Biden were very similar in style though Palin did use longer sentences. I'm not sure what that could mean.

Next, using Wordle, I again made a "word cloud" of each of the debate contributions.

Sarah Palin

Joe Biden

Glen Ifill

Peculiarly, Palin's most common word was "also." My impression was that at times she sort of went on and on, just listing talking points, which then maybe were loosely connected by the word "also"... Then came "going," maybe due to her more colloquial style? Also frequent was "John" or "McCain," in other words she was praising and invoking him a lot. Biden's most common word was "John" followed by "McCain," highlighting his not addressing Palin as much as McCain as well as his familiarity with his fellow senator. Then came "going." Maybe he was more colloquial in his style than I realized? Or maybe in both cases they were talking about their team's plans and therefore looking at the near future? Biden also used "Barack" and "Obama" many times, it seems to me when he was stressing their team effort. Finally, Ifill's most common word was "governor" (sometimes abbreviated as "gov." in the transcript: this should be added to the full term's number actually). She did use it more than "senator" or "sen." (no. 2), maybe pointing at the fact that she was addressing Palin more than Biden?

Update 11-4-08: For Palin's use of "also," see the post on the Language Log blog. For the transcript I used, see CNN. "Maverick" really only appears 15 times in it: 9 times for Biden and 6 times for Palin—hard to believe, isn't it?

Update 10-5-08: As I explain in this new post, Wordle has a lot more settings than I was aware of. Here are the improved, "corrected" word clouds.

Sarah Palin (improved)

Joe Biden (improved)

Glen Ifill (improved)

Democratic Party vs. Republican Party vs. Green Party vs. Libertarian Party vs. Constitution Party (Part 2)

2008-10-01T21:24:00.000-07:00

We explained the method used for this experiment, i.e., analyzing "toss-up" states in the US presidential election by comparing Google Insights for Search and Pollster.com graphs, in Part 1. So let's get started right away with Minnesota:

We again obtained contrasting graphs. The Republican Party (RP) was overall more Google-popular than the Democratic Party (DP). In the Pollster.com graph, however, Obama was ahead the whole time. Also, McCain's trend line followed a similar path as the RP's line while the Obama trend line was almost an inversion of the DP line. Hmm... Next is North Carolina:

This was the first state we encountered that had an actual trend line for a third-party candidate, i.e., Barr, because there were enough opinion polls that included him so as to still show up in Pollster.com's high-sensitivity graph. It is often said that he might take votes away from McCain. True, McCain lost his lead at the end of September but Barr's low trend line, if anything, was diminishing somewhat through time. In this state too we found a contrast between the parties' graph and the candidates' graph: The DP was ahead but was bypassed by the RP at the end of August. Let's look at New Hampshire:

The Google-popularity graph suffered from the lack of enough data: did New Hampshirites not surf the web as much as the inhabitants of other states? Maybe they were "politicked out" after their prominent role during the primaries? For what it's worth, the DP was the leader till mid-September when the RP passed them by. The candidates' trend line graph did confirm the overall picture with McCain temporarily overtaking Obama in mid-September. Remember that the Pollster.com graphs give a continuous trend line while the Google Insights graphs show basically monthly averages connected by a line. This explained in a way Obama having already taken back the lead in the end while the RP was still ahead. I give you one more toss-up state today: Nevada.

In this state also the general picture was the same in both graphs. The DP/Obama was ahead for most of the year but by September the RP/McCain was trumping them narrowly. I will post the last part tomorrow.

Democratic Party vs. Republican Party vs. Green Party vs. Libertarian Party vs. Constitution Party (Part 1)

2008-09-30T17:22:00.000-07:00

A grand face-off of the five major political parties of the US! Since 2004, their Google-popularity has evolved as follows:

Generally speaking, the Democratic Party (DP) narrowly bested the Republican Party (RP) though at pivotal moments the latter succeeded in rising above the former, e.g., the 2004 presidential elections (peak in October) and at the very end as we are again approaching presidential elections. Note the surge at the occasion of the 2006 elections for Congress. The Green Party was the leader among the so-called "third parties." When we look at the electoral results, these trend lines do seem to run in parallel: George Bush narrowly won re-election in 2004 and the DP became the majority party in Congress in 2006. I wonder whether the recent uptick in interest in the RP will turn out to be as consequential come election day (November 4). Of course, 2004 showed us that October is the pivotal month...

How about we perform an experiment and look at the interest in political parties in the states that right now are judged to be competitive, a.k.a. "toss-ups," starting in January? Then, we could compare the graphs with Pollster.com's presidential polls' state regression-trend-line graphs. On Pollster.com, I used the more sensitive smoothing setting and besides Obama and McCain added the third-party candidates when poll data were available: Ralph Nader (ex-Green Party, now independent), Cynthia McKinney (ex-DP, now Green Party) and Bob Barr (ex-RP, now Libertarian Party) . I realize I have to a certain extent compared apples and oranges here: parties (Google Insights) vs. candidates (Pollster.com). However, when I attempted to rectify this by adding the candidates to the Google Insights terms, this did not work: Obama and McCain's overwhelming media presence just distorted everything. In a way, I propose that searches for the parties might be a better indicator of the real, underlying political support for the candidates. It is of course also possible that the interest in the parties reflects rather on the congressional races. Anyway, let's see what the graphs told us, starting with Colorado:

The DP/Obama was ahead of the RP/McCain in general. September did see a tightening on Pollster.com but an actual overtaking of the DP by the RP in Google Insights for Search. Next is Florida:

The RP overtook the dominant DP in August (Google Insights) while Pollster.com showed McCain on top with only a tightening of the race in August. When we got to the present though, Pollster.com does point at a tie. So we had conflicting evidence here. The next "toss-up" state I tested was Indiana:

The DP was the most Google-popular through June but by September the RP had taken the lead. The opinion poll trend line however showed McCain ahead the whole time with some temporary tightening only in September. This state too offers a contrast between the two graphs.

Note that so far the "third parties" have not shown up yet in the Pollster.com graphs because they didn't cross the threshold to allow for a regression analysis. Tomorrow, I will continue this experiment with other "toss-up" states.

Toyota vs. General Motors vs. Volkswagen vs. Ford vs. Honda

2008-09-30T00:46:00.000-07:00

I faced off the largest car manufacturers in the world this time. These would be in order of number of cars produced (2007):

Toyota (incl. Lexus + Scion + Daihatsu + Isuzu)
General Motors (incl. Buick + Cadillac + Chevrolet + Daewoo + GMC + Holden + Hummer + Opel + Pontiac + Saab + Saturn + Vauxhall + Wuling + Oldsmobile)
Volkswagen (incl. Audi + Bentley + Bugatti + Škoda + SEAT + Scania + MAN)
Ford (incl. Lincoln + Mercury + Aston Martin + Volvo + Mazda + Jaguar + Land Rover)
Honda

I let Google Insights for Search compare these sets of names. So what was the result?

The ranking so to speak in Google -popularity worldwide was different from the production-numbers list above:

Ford
General Motors
Honda
Toyota
Volkswagen

The discrepancy was most marked for Toyota and Ford that switched places. Actually, Ford was ahead of everyone else. The latter were constantly jostling for position in a narrow band. Most everyone declined through the years except for Volkswagen and Honda. Let us look at some country-specific graphs, beginning with the US:

There was a bit more seasonality here. Otherwise, the only major difference lay in Volkswagen's poor performance and the fact that Honda was the only car company to increase. Note however that "less than 25% of searches containing 'volkswagen+audi…' are categorized as Automotive." Still, I couldn't remove the Automotive filter because a few of the terms had significant non-automobile meanings, e.g., SEAT = seat. What about Germany?

Locally-headquartered Volkswagen was tops, then followed Ford and General Motors. Honda and esp. Toyota were stuck at the bottom. Honda and Volkswagen were the only ones to grow. Next, the United Kingdom:

Ford was solidly in the lead, followed by Volkswagen. All companies declined. Let's make one more graph, this time using data from Japanese (English-savvy) web surfers:

Honda and Toyota were clear leaders on their home turf. Volkswagen and General Motors were struggling. Still, General Motors slightly grew overall. Honda and Ford saw the biggest improvement.

Nancy Pelosi vs. Henry Paulson vs. Barney Frank vs. Ben Bernanke vs. Harry Reid vs. Mitch McConnell vs. John Boehner vs. Spencer Bachus et al.

2008-09-28T23:15:00.000-07:00

Today, I investigated the major players in the negotiations leading to the proposed "mother of all bailouts" a.k.a. the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. First, I faced off Treasury Secretary Paulson, Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke and the major Democratic leaders involved: House Speaker Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Reid and House Financial Services Committee Chair Frank.

I limited the graph to the year 2008. Pelosi was the most powerful: constantly-high Google-popularity. However, towards the end, the financial crisis pushed Frank and esp. Paulson to the forefront, overtaking her. In case there were any doubt, the House of Representatives weighed heavier than the Senate: just compare Pelosi and Reid. Let's have a look at what a face-off with the major Republican leaders (House Minority Leader Boehner, Senate Minority Leader McConnell, House Financial Services Committee Ranking Member Baucus) yielded:

Paulson and Bernanke dominated the Republicans, esp. at the end. Considering the results of the first face-off, the latter were pretty much bystanders, at least according to their Google-popularity... Why didn't I look into President Bush and the two major presidential candidates? There was that high-profile meeting after all? Actually, I did:

As you can see, they were the elephants in the (negotiating) room, esp. Obama and McCain. Anyway, now comes the hard part: getting majorities in the House and the Senate to sign off on the bailout...

Paul Newman vs. Robert Redford vs. Clint Eastwood vs. Sean Connery vs. Charlton Heston vs. Robert Duvall

2008-09-27T22:49:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Paul Newman died. He was one of the greatest actors of his generation and a remarkable, generous man. I faced him off against his good friend Robert Redford with whom he was often mentioned in one breath, even though they only made two movies together: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 1969, and The Sting, 1973—but what movies!

I stopped the comparison at April 2008 to exclude the distorting effect of his being terminally ill and dying these last several months. I am at a loss to explain why his top point is in January 2005—does anyone have any ideas? Nevertheless, Redford did slightly surpass Newman on average regarding Google-popularity. However, Redford (72) is actually quite a bit younger than Newman (✝83). So I found four award-winning actors more of his generation who were still alive till this year: Clint Eastwood, Sean Connery, Charlton Heston and Robert Duvall.

Again to make a fair comparison, I stopped the graph at March 2008, just before Heston's death. To my surprise, Newman was preceded by Eastwood and Connery. Note esp. Eastwood's peaks in February 2005 (4 Oscars and 3 Oscar nominations for Million Dollar Baby) and in February 2007 (2 Oscar nominations for Flags of Our Fathers and 1 Oscar and 3 Oscar nominations for Letters from Iwo Jima).

Barack Obama vs. John McCain vs. Jim Lehrer

2008-09-26T22:17:00.000-07:00

Tonight, I watched the first presidential candidates' debate at "Ole Miss" (University of Mississipi, Oxford). I thought I'd do the same thing I did for the convention speeches with the specific words uttered by Obama, McCain and—why not?—moderator Lehrer. I looked how many words they used. Also, how many sentences and characters (excl. spaces) did the individual debate parts have? I summarized these three measures in a bubble graph:

Lehrer obviously had much less to say than Obama and McCain who ended up with rather similar measures. I guess you could say that McCain used fewer but longer words in shorter sentences than Obama...

Then, using Wordle, I made a "word cloud" each of the debate contributions.

Barack Obama

John McCain

Jim Lehrer

As expected, because Lehrer was the moderator, words such as "senator," both their last names, "minutes" and "question" were prominent. Obama's most frequently used words were "going" (action sentences?), "think" (not impulsive, rash... like McCain?), "make" (constructive, tangible?) and "now" (no living in the past?). McCain's commonest words were "senator" and "know": stressing his experience perhaps? Then came "Obama" (more attacks on the person?) followed by "United States" (patriotism?), "want" (forcefulness?) and "spending" (Republican hot issue of cutting spending). These were just my initial associations of course, I wonder what a linguist would think of these patterns.

Update 10-5-08: As I explain in this new post, Wordle has a lot more settings than I was aware of. Here are the improved, "corrected" word clouds.

Barack Obama (improved)

John McCain (improved)

Jim Lehrer (improved)

Space Shuttle vs. International Space Station vs. SpaceShipOne vs. Soyuz vs. Shenzhou

2008-09-25T16:05:00.000-07:00

I compared the Google-popularity of the five successful human spaceflight projects, using again Google Insights for Search.

The Space Shuttle won this one by a mile. The peak in July 2005 corresponded with its first mission since the catastrophic February 2003 mission (Columbia). Every next trend line high point was linked to a mission. Note how the February, March and May 2008 missions seem to have been met with less interest than the previous ones. SpaceShipOne also stood out due to the two peaks (June and October 2004) corresponding with the successful manned spaceflights, winning the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE for the first civilian suborbital manned flight. The October 2005 second Chinese manned spaceflight, the Shenzhou VI, and the interest in today's Shenzhou VII mission are the only times Shenzhou registered in the 2004-today time span. Finally, it appeared that every rise in interest for the International Space Station coincided with a Space Shuttle mission. The work horse of human spaceflight, Soyuz, doesn't get much recognition unfortunately.

Bay vs. Lake vs. Sea vs. Ocean vs. Gulf

2008-09-24T20:30:00.000-07:00

This time I faced off the five largest kinds of bodies of water.

You might have thought that Google-popularity would be linked to size and expected to see ocean or sea on top but it is bay that overall is the "winner." Maybe that has something to do with the existence of a lot of place names (and their derivatives) that contain "Bay"? Note that lake is very seasonal: everybody goes to the lake in the summer, I guess?

Verizon vs. AT&T or Cingular vs. Sprint vs. Nextel vs. T-Mobile

2008-09-23T22:11:00.000-07:00

I had a face-off of US wireless providers (cell phone companies). I combined Cingular (old name) and AT&T (new name) but left Sprint and Nextel, now one company, separate because they're still separate brands and because this way we can see their individual trends before the merger. But first, let's list them according to subscribers (customers) as of mid-2008:

AT&T 73 million
Verizon 69 million
Sprint Nextel 52 million
T-Mobile 32 million

Google-popularity mirrored the customer base except for no. 2 Verizon besting no. 1 AT&T. What is more, Verizon showed a constantly increasing trend while AT&T's trend at first followed Verizon but then about mid-2007 started to decline. Pre-merger, Nextel's customer base was smaller than Sprint's but they still were more popular: advertising advantage? Also, the Nextel side of the new company has been doing worse than the Sprint side after the merger, in other words the Nextel brand has lost proportionally more customers than the Sprint one. This was reflected in their declining trend after-merger.

Hearst Castle vs. William Randolph Hearst vs. Julia Morgan

2008-09-22T21:45:00.000-07:00

I recently visited Hearst Castle in San Simeon, CA. It is unique and definitely worth seeing. It was built over many years (1919-1947) by architect Julia Morgan for newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. I thought I'd check on the Google-popularity of the complex, its owner and its architect.

The palatial estate, an eclectic mix of European and Spanish Colonial styles, furnishings and collectibles, was the most popular. The surprise lay more in the fact that the powerful Mr. Hearst barely bested Ms. Morgan. Note that all three trend downwards. I include a few pictures I took at the Castle in August:

Here a few more taken in November 2007:

Yahoo vs. Google vs. MSN vs. AOL vs. Ask.com

2008-09-21T17:22:00.000-07:00

According to Net Applications, the August 2008 global market share of internet search engines was as follows:

Google (79%)
Yahoo (12%)
MSN (5%; incl. Live Search)
AOL (2%)
Ask.com (1%)

I used Google Insights for Search to investigate their global Google-popularity:

It turned out that Yahoo was more popular than Google at least as far as people searching for something relating to these portals was concerned. I would guess that this may have something to do with the extra directory feature of Yahoo. In fact, MSN is about as searched for as Google. Note that Google is the only one to display a sudden sharp increase (mid-2005). It then surpassed MSN about mid-2006. Of course, I live in the US so I get a different impression than people in other countries. So I ran the trend analysis on a few individual countries. First, I took on the US:

Yahoo was more clearly in the lead and Google didn't show that sudden jump as much. MSN was weak and stayed that way. How about Germany?

Google jumped in the lead in mid-2005 and stayed ahead. How were things in France?

Contrary to its European neighbor Germany, France had Yahoo and even MSN ahead of Google. Now I turned to Asia: Japan.

Yahoo was totally in charge. Sure, Google bypassed MSN by the beginning of 2006 but was still way behind. AOL was insignificant. Finally, what about Brazil?

MSN managed barely to stay ahead of Yahoo and Google.

Windows vs. Linux vs. Mac vs. Windows Vista (Computers & Electronics)

2008-09-20T22:50:00.000-07:00

An article in PC World reminded me that I had thought about doing a computer operating systems face-off in the past. However, this was made difficult in Google Trends due to the many non-OS uses of "windows" as well as "apple." Google Insights for Search can handle this better because it is able to filter for "Computers & Electronics" only. I decided to also include Windows Vista next to Windows in general.

As expected, Windows dominated worldwide but was declining steadily. Linux was second and also decreasing to the point where an ascendant Mac overtook it in December 2007. Windows Vista on its own was decidely not Google-popular: it ended with half the number of its introduction peak in February 2007. This illustrated its lagging acceptance. The data can be compared with market share evolution (source: Net Applications):

4th quarter of 2004

Windows 96% (of which Windows Vista 0%)
Mac 3%
Linux <1%

2nd quarter of 2008

Windows 91% (of which Windows Vista 15%)
Mac 8%
Linux 1%

Notice how Linux generates a lot more buzz than market share. I expected the results to be a bit different in the US alone:

Mac precedes Linux overall and overtook it more specifically already in August 2005. How about Japan?

Linux, albeit still second, is stronger but still is joined by Mac in September 2007. One more comparison: the UK:

Windows is totally dominant here. The cross-over of Linux and Mac took place early, in May 2005.

Anthropology vs. Archaeology vs. Linguistics vs. Art History vs. Musicology

2008-09-19T22:58:00.000-07:00

Tonight, a face-off of five academic disciplines which are somewhat related:

Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of archaeology | archeo... in all years
anthropology 1.19
archaeology | archeo... 1.00
linguistics 0.64
"art history" 0.43
musicology 0.12

All disciplines displayed lows in the summer and at Christmas while peaking in Fall when university is back in session. Also, they all decreased steadily in Google-popularity. Anthropology beat out arch(a)eology for first place, musicology was dead last but had a surprisingly big peak in early 2004. It turned out that this was related to Prince's Musicology album however... Pretty good album I must agree. I'm not sure what that other peak in the news graph in late 2004 represents. But wait, let's see if we got different results when we zoomed in on specific English-speaking countries. First the US as a benchmark:

Scale is based on the average traffic of archaeology | archeo... from United States in all years
anthropology 1.56
archaeology | archeo... 1.00
linguistics 0.52
"art history" 0.58
musicology 0.10

Anthropology was more ahead in the US than in the world as a whole while linguistics and art history were about even now. Next, the United Kingdom:

Scale is based on the average traffic of archaeology | archeo... from United Kingdom in all years
anthropology 0.43
archaeology | archeo... 1.00
linguistics 0.27
"art history" 0.16
musicology 0.01

In the UK, archaeology was twice as popular as anthropology but declined much faster. In the UK, archaeology is not subsumed under a broader anthropology discipline, unlike in the US. Musicology only registered in Google-popularity for the Prince album in 2004 and then nothing... How about Australia?

Scale is based on the average traffic of archaeology | archeo... from Australia in all years
anthropology 0.42
archaeology | archeo... 1.00
linguistics 0.14
"art history" 0
musicology 0

Here too archaeology was more popular than anthropology. Art history barely registered and musicology not at all: I guess they don't like Prince as much down under? ;-) Lastly, let's check on Canada:

Scale is based on the average traffic of archaeology | archeo... from Canada in all years
anthropology 1.52
archaeology | archeo... 1.00
linguistics 0.46
"art history" 0.38
musicology 0

Well, Canada may still have the Queen as head of state but in in this academic face-off they followed the US and not the British Commonwealth... Creeping Americanization, I guess ;-) Anthropology was again king.

By the way, just like with some of the other face-offs, I am constrained to search terms that don't have too many different meanings lest they distort the graphs. For example, "philosophy" is too often used in a non-academic context. I left "musicology" in this face-off in a way to demonstrate the statistical noise produced by such an ambiguous term.

Bank of America vs. Citibank vs. Wells Fargo vs. Wachovia vs. JP Morgan

2008-09-18T23:05:00.001-07:00

While the US financial system is falling apart at the seams, let's have a look at the banks. I chose the top five online banks ranked by total assets (pre-crisis probably) according to NetValley.com:

Bank of America
JP Morgan
Citibank
Wachovia
Wells Fargo

Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of citibank in all years
"bank of america" 1.98
citibank 1.00
"wells fargo" 0.96
wachovia 0.68
"jp morgan" 0.16

So the Google-popularity is as follows:

Bank of America
Citibank
Wells Fargo
Wachovia
JP Morgan

JP Morgan goes from second to last place and was also the only bank not to have an increasing trend line. Someone better versed in the banking system could probably explain this. I just don't know. Bank of America grew the fastest, increasing its popularity advantage.

Leo Laporte vs. Guy Kawasaki vs. David Pogue vs. Walt Mossberg vs. Cali Lewis

2008-09-17T19:26:00.000-07:00

Today, a face-off of five tech journalists:

Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of "guy kawasaki" in all years
"leo laporte" 3.90
"guy kawasaki" 1.00
"david pogue" 0.60
"walt mossberg" 0.30
"cali lewis" 0.20

There's something odd about this 4-year graph—I ran the Google Trends search several times but it came out the same way each time. Notice how all journalists except Laporte have no data until what looks like exactly January 1, 2006? Hmm... fishy. For what it's worth, Laporte overwhelms the field. But let's look at the 12-month graph for whose time span we have a complete dataset:

Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of "guy kawasaki" in the last 12 months
"leo laporte" 2.04
"guy kawasaki" 1.00
"david pogue" 0.76
"walt mossberg" 0.50
"cali lewis" 0.38

Laporte still is twice as "Google-popular" than Kawasaki. There's not much of a clear pattern otherwise. However, I thought I'd try the beta Google Insights for Search in this case, to see if it had data for all five journalists from the beginning of the 4-year span. Lo and behold: it did!

Scale is based on the worldwide 2004-present interest over time
"leo laporte" 45
"guy kawasaki" 14
"david pogue" 11
"walt mossberg" 9
"cali lewis" 3

So what's going on here? I would have thought that both Google tools use the same search-history database but maybe I'm wrong? Google Insights for Search is in many ways more powerful than Google Trends: for instance, it allows one to taylor a time span to any length, down to the level of months, e.g., March 2005 to November 2007. The numbers used are different: scaled to the average search traffic for one of the terms (Trends) vs. scaled (on a 100-point scale) to the total number of searches done on Google (Insights). Honestly, I'm not sure about the real distinction between the two approaches. I don't think that it makes much of a difference for my purpose. Also, the trend lines in Insights are too fine to allow for easy differentiation. Remains the strange omission of pre-2006 data for 4 out of 5 search terms in Google Trends...

AIG vs. Fannie Mae vs. Lehman Brothers vs. Bear Stearns vs. Freddie Mac

2008-09-16T23:26:00.000-07:00

You know what is amazing? We just had hurricane Ike wipe out half a city (Galveston), paralyze the 4th-largest city in the US (Houston)... and though this would normally dominate news coverage for days to come, it is already totally eclipsed by events of an even more horrendous and shocking character: the (ongoing?) collapse and taxpayer-funded bailout of sundry financial behemoths. Nobody knows whether the economy will stabilize or get only worse in a hurry—except John "The Fundamentals of Our Economy Are Strong" McCain of course.

Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of "fannie mae" in all years
aig 3.50
"fannie mae" 1.00
"lehman brothers" 0.80
"bear stearns" 0.60
"freddie mac" 0.40

This 4-year Google Trends graph shows clearly how important today's government take-over of AIG was: it stood head and shoulders above the other bailed-out corporations. Let's look at the 12-month graph:

Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of "fannie mae" in the last 12 months
aig 3.70
"fannie mae" 1.00
"lehman brothers" 0.90
"bear stearns" 0.90
"freddie mac" 0.60

A similar picture emerged here with the exception of the first bail-out (Bear Stearns) peaking in March on bad news. By the time the bad news about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac hit in July, its shock value was already less. Finally, here is the 30-day Google-popularity trend graph:

Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of "fannie mae" in the last 30 days
aig 2.20
"fannie mae" 1.00
"lehman brothers" 1.80
"bear stearns" 0.20
"freddie mac" 0.60

The latest once-thought-impossible debacles are just now starting to really grab everyone's attention...

The Beatles vs. Pink Floyd vs. The Rolling Stones vs. Led Zeppelin vs. The Beach Boys

2008-09-15T21:58:00.000-07:00

I just learnt that Richard Wright, a founding member of the rock band Pink Floyd, passed away. A lot of great bands came out of the '60s—some of which incredibly enough are still more or less active! Anyway, which were the most influential ones? The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has an unranked 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll list and I found which rock groups were the best represented:

The Beatles (7 songs)
The Rolling Stones (6 songs)
The Beach Boys (5 songs)
Led Zeppelin (4 songs)
Pink Floyd (3 songs)

So how did they fare in a Google-popularity contest?

Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of "pink floyd" in all years
beatles 1.70
"pink floyd" 1.00
"rolling stones" 0.75
"led zeppelin" 0.60
"beach boys" 0.20

Yes, you see it correctly: the one band that split up long, long ago while the others are still more or less active, well that band was tops: The Beatles! Here's the Google-popularity ranking:

The Beatles
Pink Floyd
The Rolling Stones
Led Zeppelin
The Beach Boys

Getting back to the occasion of my post, Pink Floyd jumps from last to second place. I think I'm going to listen to Dark Side of the Moon now...

"Angelina Jolie" vs. "Tiger Woods" vs. "David Beckham" vs. "Oprah Winfrey" vs. "Beyoncé Knowles"

2008-09-14T22:15:00.000-07:00

Today, I compared the top five of the Forbes Celebrity 100. This is how they were ranked in June:

Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of "tiger woods" in all years
"angelina jolie" 2.25
"tiger woods" 1.00
"david beckham" 0.90
"oprah winfrey" 0.40
"beyonce knowles" 0.25

So how did these celebrities do in the Google-popularity stakes?

Angelina Jolie
Tiger Woods
David Beckham
Oprah Winfrey
Beyonce Knowles

Jolie dramatically improves on her ranking: she totally dominates regarding online popularity. Winfrey on the other hand is less popular than her celebrity power ranking. By the way, I'm not bothering to include a 12-months Google Trends graph because it does not change the picture.