Filed under: Analytics, Canada, Posted by TA | Tags: Ariana Grande, Canada, google, Iggy Azalea, Jian Ghomeshi, keywords, Lasagne, Lorde, Musicians, Popularity, Recipes, Retrospective, Rice Krispies Squares, search, Shepherd's Pie, Stephen Harper, Taylor Swift, trends, Tzatziki
When was the last time you played around with Google Trends? It’s a very cool, sometimes random service by Google that allows users to see statistics on search volume, keywords and traffic.
Google did a great job advertising their 2014 Search Retrospective, so i decided to check it out. Trends offers a number of different filters, including year, category and country. I searched Canada 2014 and, with a few exceptions, was not overly impressed or surprised by the results. Check them out below.
http://www.google.com/trends/topcharts#vm=cat&geo=CA&date=2014&cid
The Jian Ghomeshi affair took a much higher proportion than I would have expected. Not only was he the number 1 in the “Canadians” category, but he also made it to the top 5 in “Celebrities”. Rob Ford sadly took the silver medal in “Canadians”. Why did people even bother? Other categories reinforced my theory that in Canada, quality music and healthy dietary options are not necessarily neighbours. Look at “Musicians” and “Recipes” for example.
Musicians (top 5, from high to low): Iggy Azalea, Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift, Nicki Minaj, and Lorde
Recipes (top 5, from high to low): Shepherd’s Pie, Tzatziki, Rice Krispies Squares (oh, gosh!), Lasagne, and Charoset.
No, I wasn’t expecting Bach or Gourmet Quinoa Salad to be part of the list, but we can all agree that nobody deserves Iggy Azalea or Rice Krispies Squares.
The last category that really caught my attention was “How to…”. “Vote” as number 1 was a grateful surprise. Now, “Purée” and “Snapchat” as number 3 and 5??
Have fun playing with the data.
Filed under: Behavior, Culture, Finances, Society | Tags: Belgium, Denmark, Egypt, google, Google Finance, India, Indonesia, Morocco, PLA, Playboy, Poland, Romania, Sex, stocks, trends, Turkey, Vietnam
Let’s be smart. If you’re a blogger, it’s imperative to write about things people want to know. What’s the most searched keyword on the web? Sex. What’s the most used search engine on the web? Google. So I decided to make a little test using these infamous and popular words with the beta Google Trends. Here’s how it works, quoting from Google.
“Google Trends analyzes a portion of Google web searches to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you enter, relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time. We then show you a graph with the results – our Search Volume Index graph. Below the search and news volume graphs, Trends displays the top regions, cities, and languages in which people searched for the first search term you entered.“
Hence, with that information in mind I went to www.google.com/trends and typed “sex”. The results are quite interesting.
Search for “sex” has been steadily increasing since 2004 and reached a peak in 2008 after news published by a certain LesEchecs.com using the words “latina sex young: sexy Latina sex and free Latina samples sex, free Latina sex”. The regions’ ranking is also quite intriguing. First ten are (from higher to lower): Vietnam, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Morocco, Turkey, Poland, Romania, Denmark and Belgium.
But hey, there’s something to be told here. It doesn’t mean that only because sex I popular that everyone is immune to these harsh economical days. I checked the most famous company involved with sex listed in the stock exchange: Playboy Enterprises. Ok, are you a Playboy investor? No? Even you will pass out with these numbers. PLA shares were sold by $ 1.19 on Oct 23rd. On Jan 2nd, the first year of trading in 2008, they were worth $8.89 according to Google Finance. They lost $7.80 in almost 10 months. The conclusion is clear: search for “sex” goes up, but sex stocks are down.
Angel and Tiggs 