What do people look for ? A few years ago it would have been difficult to gather information at a large scale and grab it with a powerful, yet more or less objective tool. Nowadays a single company is able to know what you want, what you buy or what you just did. And sometimes it shares a little bit of the data.
So, the end of the year gives me an occasion to try and discover changes in the mentalities using the ready-to-use Google Trends. Just for fun…
How does research compare with other interests ?
First of all, research is no fun, it was more requested than money and was at the level of work, but things have changed. It still outnumbers fun in the news though.
A few trends regarding research, “Research is no fun”… Source: Google), worldwide trends.
People seem to look for money more often than a few years ago, it’s the only thing which becomes more popular, even work just remains stable.
A remark: I think the search volume is much more bigger now than it was back in 2004, there are also more languages available, and probably more search terms (since the users may create more complex searching patterns as they see the search engines are efficient enough to match their needs).
So if the trend of the word ‘work’ stays the same it may mean the word does compare better in the index than before. It’s definitely not the case for research, though I must say it is quite popular in India (see link above).
A connected world
The ways to connect to the internet or at least to telecommunications networks are evolving, in this case the trends are intuitively meaningful
Importance of wifi, a connected world. Source: Google), worldwide trends.
The rise of the 3G since 2008 is of course to be granted to the existence of the iPhone. Unsprisingly, the trends match the news volume in this case, everybody knows how well the launch of Apple products is covered. But what happened in 2007? Why aren’t the 3G networks mentionned in the news anymore? Is it a failure in Google’s algorithms or in the data collection?
It’s really amazing to see how bluetooth interests people a lot more at Christmas time ! I don’t know what the peaks refer to if not this particular event. Note that it’s the same for the 3G since the iPhone exists, but also for the WiFi. Sometimes this kind of trend in the IT-World is related to the Chaos Communication Congress, but I am not sure here. It is probably the smart phones again.
Wired connections seem to fade away from the zeitgeist…
to get, got, gotten
Last but not least, people get fat, but want to get better and most of all to get big.
Results for get. Source: Google, also worldwide trends.
If you watch the evolution of ‘get fat’ by its own it is already a trend, most of all in the US. I tried ‘get slim’ but it is nothing compared to it, it does not scale well.
The graphic speaks for itself. It seems like a lot a things could get better in this world!
I don’t know what people wanted to get ready for in March or April 2010, I’m getting curious!