Car vs. Auto vs. Automobile vs. Motor Vehicle

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

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

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

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

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.