Sex vs. Love vs. Marriage

Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of love in all years.
sex 2.60
love 1.00
marriage 0.10

As this Google Trends graph shows, people are looking more for sex than love—not exactly a surprise—and aren't thinking much about marriage... Over the 4-year period, sex is gradually increasing, love is stable and marriage is very slightly declining, which is more obvious in a "marriage-only" graph:


Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of marriage in all years.
marriage 1.00

Carly Fiorina vs. Sarah Palin vs. Claire McCaskill vs. Kathleen Sebelius vs. Janet Napolitano

Now that we've learnt John McCain's choice of running mate, let's have a retrospective look at the female dark horses in this year's veep stakes:


Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of "sarah palin" in all years.
"carly fiorina" 3.00
"sarah palin" 1.00
"claire mccaskill" 0.50
"kathleen sebelius" 0.50
"janet napolitano" 0

Fiorina (R) dominates the long 4-year view due to her much-publicized involuntary exit from the helm of Hewlett Packard (HP) in early 2005. So let's zoom in to the last 12 months instead:


Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of "sarah palin" in all years.
"carly fiorina" 0.46
"sarah palin" 1.00
"claire mccaskill" 0.16
"kathleen sebelius" 0.52
"janet napolitano" 0.16

Sarah Palin (R) got the most attention here, initially due to her 2006 Alaska gubernatorial race but continuing to the present. Sebelius (D) was the only one to get in the neighborhood. How about the last 12 months?


Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of "sarah palin" in all years.
"carly fiorina" 0.06
"sarah palin" 1.00
"claire mccaskill" 0.02
"kathleen sebelius" 0.44
"janet napolitano" 0.02

Seblius peaked a couple of weeks ago but Palin ended up with the top finish! Needless to say, Hillary Clinton (D) pulverizes this whole group in all time periods but then she was never a dark horse, wasn't she?

Facebook vs. MySpace vs. Orkut vs. Hi5 vs. LinkedIn

This time, we have a contest between social-networking websites:


Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of facebook in all years.
myspace 2.05
facebook 1.00
orkut 0.60
hi5 0.50
linkedin 0

First of all, mid-2004 is when the first, Orkut, appeared. However, the phenomenon really took off with MySpace which grew very fast in Google-popularity only to be overtaken by Facebook earlier this year. Notice how Hi5 likewise overtook Orkut last January. I am quite surprised at the insignificance of LinkedIn. For a more detailed and complete overview of social-networking sites around the world, see the Royal blog.

Blue vs. Red vs. Orange vs. Green

Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of blue in all years.
blue 1.00
red 1.08
orange 0.56
green 0.60

I wanted to face off the primary colors today. However, it would look funny not to have them in their own color, right? So I added "orange." Anyway, the leading red and blue are about equal regarding Google-popularity, orange and green also cluster overall at about half of the leaders. Red does seem to have gone on a tear for about the last year or so. Maybe something to do with the Red Sox? Also, green used to be stronger than orange but about two years ago, orange totally overtook green. What's up with that? Could this have some other sports connection too?

Canada vs. Mexico

Let's have a look at the US neighbors:


Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of mexico in all years.
canada 2.22
mexico 1.00

Canada is more popular than Mexico in Google searches. Both are declining but Canada does so much faster than Mexico. However, looking at their occurrence in Google news, both are increasing and Canada does so again faster than Mexico. The two parts of the Google Trends graph seem contradictory... I guess you could say that the countries are receiving more coverage in the news so that not as many people need to look them up? Hmm, you could just as easily expect that more news coverage would lead to more interest hence more searches. I'm not sure about this one. Any thoughts?

Einstein vs. Isaac Newton vs. Charles Darwin vs. Euclid vs. Copernicus

I've compared some of the most influential, revolutionary scientists of all time (Google Trends):


Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of "isaac newton" in all years.
einstein 5.35
"isaac newton" 1.00
"charles darwin" 0.75
euclid 0.55
copernicus 0.45

Einstein dwarfs everybody else: he is truly the iconic scientist. However, his impact makes it hard to distinguish the other four. Let's look at them separately:


Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of "isaac newton" in all years.
"isaac newton" 1.00
"charles darwin" 0.76
euclid 0.54
copernicus 0.45

Even more pronounced than before, we can spot a seasonal aspect to the Google-interest in science: summertime and Christmas are outspoken "unscientific." The possibility that the interest in science is gradually declining is also more apparent in this graph. Finally, people are more interested in Newton and Darwin, closer to our own cultural framework than Euclid and Copernicus.