Saturday, May 13, 2006

Google Trends

'To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful'. That is Google's mission statement and the volume of information made available to the world is mind boggling. Last week Google came up with a new product, this time to organize it's own information and make that universally accessible, and hopefully useful.

Yes I am talking about Google Trends. Its a very simple product and equally easy to use and understand. When you enter any query in the search field, it returns with results of the number of times that particular keyword was searched for along with the time line (beginning from 2004) and the areas it was searched in. For example, if I do a search on the keyword tsunami, this is what you will see. So we notice the abnormal spike during December 2004, because that's when the tsunami struck south east Asia and thus led to frantic searches on that word. You will notice that you can also select the particular region of which the search results you are looking for. In this case it was 'All Region', if we change that to India only, this is what we get.

There is also the option of comparing the results of two keywords. So lets take 'summer' and 'winter' as examples. The setting remains India only for the moment. The way to do so is separate the keywords by commas. As simple as that. So the results for summer and winter show the following. Again it is clear that the searches made on 'summer' and 'winter' are related to the time of the year as we see a consistent trend of highs and lows for summer during summer months and winter months respectively. Same logic applies to winter too.

This is a great way of analyzing the vast amount of data available and we can actually find out the reasons for the rise and fall for almost every keyword keeping the situation and events of that time in mind.

I am listing some examples below. Some of them are interesting to say the least, and the rest, just for fun. And I am keeping the region settings to 'India Only' for easier understanding and analysis.

1. Harry Potter

Its clear that there was a surge in searches corresponding to the release of the books/movies.

2. Nobel Prize

Again some clear trends are noticeable. Over the past years, this keyword has been searched on mostly during the months of September/October, and that's when the prizes are announced every year.

3. Kaun Banega Crorepati

As the show had gone off air and came back only in July 2005, we see the graph starting from there. There was a corresponding rise during Amitabh Bachchan's period of illness and then as it was suddenly taken off the air, the graph also dies a sudden death hanging in midair.

4. Murder

This one is a little more interesting than the rest. Although this graph is quite steady otherwise, there is a sudden spike in mid 2004. At first I couldn't think of any famous murder story at that time, and after some research I realize the Ms. Sherawat movie Murder was released then!


Now let us see some of the interesting comparisons.

5. Mangal Pandey and Rang De Basanti

I took these two Aamir Khan movies, and just as you will expect there are distinct rises in the graph right when these two were released, and then they fell sharply.

6. Anil Ambani and Mukesh Ambani

No clear reason for the graph being so much in favor of the younger brother, plain and simple charisma factor at work maybe!

7. Sonia and Sania

Again some interesting spikes. Sonia shot up during may-June 2004, the last national election time, while Sania's graphs sore during Jan 2005, when she made waves at the Australian Open that year. And since then its been Sania all the way. So its clear, being a 30 odd ranked WTA player with a nose ring is more likely to get you up there in the popularity charts than abdicating the prime minsitership and MP ship of India.

Finally let me end on a light note.

8. Banerjee, Mukherjee and Chatterjee

The long standing Battle of The Bengalis is over. The Mukherjees have won hands and legs down and I am racking my brains to come up with some famous Mukherjee who just took the fight away from us!

8a. Banerjee, Mukherjee, Chatterjee and Ganguly

And suddenly this not so well known Ganguly comes in from somewhere and steals the show. This time I think I know who is responsible! Dada, the maharaja of Bengal is enough to change statistics single handedly, or so it seems.

9. Infosys, Wipro, Satyam, TCS and CTS

With almost all my engineer friends working for one of these companies or the other, this one should put all future debates to rest. And the graphs are just too close to take a call.

10. Love and Friendship

Its amazing how friends become important only during one particular time of the year, the first Sunday of August. Don't rack your brains any further, its Friendship day, this should surely mean VICTORY for the card manufacturers!

10 comments:

Sasidhar said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Sasidhar said...

I had a fun one;

http://www.google.com/trends?q=full+moon

maxdavinci said...

this shud be rewritten as 'G Trends for dummies'

gud one!

Sharmila Kothagundla said...

thanks for sharing ur knowledge.. itz cool... google is very innovative..but i couldn't understand one thing...the graph has only years in it, then how could you tell which month the graph is max.? If you have gone according to the scale or mesurements, then in sonia n sania graph, sania was max. some where in the mid of 2005 and 2006, then how did u come 2 conclusion that it is jan... same in the case of friendship and love, the graph was high during the beginning of the year then how could u conclude that it is aug, n how come there is no raise during feb 14 for love.

AS said...

You missed out some really nice trends here try these out...

http://www.google.com/trends?q=bill+gates%2Clarry+page
http://www.google.com/trends?q=google%2Cyahoo&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all
http://www.google.com/trends?q=google%2Cmsn&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all

Pushan Sikdar said...

gr8 writing!!!!!
keep up.
m new to the world of bloging and will take snippets from ur writing style

Anonymous said...

@ sharmilla challa.....

abt ur comment... actually the way u look at the graph is wrong... the place where the year is written is not the beginning of the year... its some where around the middle of the year... they have divided the graph into different sections by drawing lines.... this line divides different years and on the left side is december and right is the month of jan of next year... each year is again divided into 4 sub sec... each of these for three consecutive months... by looking in this way u can see tat there is a rise for the search for FRIEND during august and and love during feb....

google has again proved tat when it comes to innovative ideas they comes first...

Anonymous said...

hi suhel,
click on the link below

http://www.google.com/trends?q=mitra%2Cganguly%2Cbanerjee&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all

see the trend for mitra

Dainty Damsel said...

hey really nice blog amigo.
As am very busy couldn't participate actively.
will keep visiting this space :)

Suhel Banerjee said...

@deo gratias - Well, most probably. But certainly that won't be the case now anymore!

@sasidhar - :)

@maxdavinci - have taken your advice and branded it as the same in some forums.

@sharmila - Thanks for the compliments. But i don't understand your question completely because the way I see it I do see a clear correlation between events and their spikes in the graphs.

@Asankhya - Thanks for posting those.

@dead man walking - That's very kind of you! Hope you are blogging regularly now.

@Hashim - Precisely

@Manas - :)

@Vaishnavi - Thank you so much:) Hope you still visit it and enjoy it!