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

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.

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.

9/11 vs. World Trade Center or Twin Towers vs. Pentagon vs. Flight 93

On the occasion of the 7th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy, I compared related terms:


Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of "world trade center"... in all years
9/11 1.50
"world trade center"... 1.00
pentagon 0.90
"flight 93" 0.10

As expected, all terms experience an annual Google-peak on the anniversaries, with 9/11 having an edge. Note the contrast between 2004 and 2008: in 2004, 9/11 invoked a lot of queries during the presidential elections campaign while now there's no such interest. Indeed, apart from a video at the Republican National Convention (which was widely criticized), there has been little direct mention of the events of 9/11 this year.

Update: I forgot about Rudy "A Noun, a Verb and 9/11" Giuliani during this year's early primaries. It really didn't rise to the level of four years ago though.