24 October 2008

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

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.

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