Livening Up Google Zeitgeist
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Written By Reprise Media | November 3, 2005 | Share This
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Wired founding father and tech journalist John Battelle says he’s bored with Google Zeitgeist, a digest of search statistics showing which searches are most popular that week/month/year, etc.
Here’s a quick clip:
“And I have to say, it’s beyond predictable - now it’s simply deadly dull….How about some of you Googlers start futzing around in that fabled 20% time, and come up with something interesting again?”
In a way he’s right - even though search behavior is often unpredictable, there are certain searches you’ll be able to count on month after month, year after year. Around Halloween people will search for costumes, Valentine’s day it’s all about flowers and candy. If a new president is up for election, political searches will skyrocket and so on.
So the question you have to ask yourself is this:
What would be a new, slightly-recreational-but-still-useful tool that gives users a unique view of the search landscape?
This immediately brings to mind of one of my favorite tools I used to use during my days as a Creative Maximizer at Google. It was an interface with a single box where you could enter a term and see how many individuals had searched on that term in the last week.
In addition to vanity searches for myself and my friends, I would try to enter the craziest, most depraved term and see how many people had done such a search that week - examples might be “covering up a murder”, “dead baby recipes”, etc.
Often the results would be zero, but when you’d get a number (any number) it was a ticket to Heebie-Jeebies City.
Then again, not sure what the rammifications would be of making such a tool widely available. We might be better off seeing searches for pumpkins and current events. At least we’ll sleep a little better at night. The less we think about all the weirdos out there, the better.
Topics: Google |