The Google Zeitgeist

---

Don't you wonder how other people use Google? And given Google's awesome popularity, don't you wonder what the big trends are? Google isn't the average search engine. Googling is a social force, and Google trends say important things about society and culture. Well, maybe not important things, but things.

Fortunately, Google isn't too modest to track its own usage and package the results in an entertaining format. The Google Zeitgeist presumes to be a mirror of virtual society - its interests, passions, desires, infolusts, technical specifications, and national demographics. Google puts all this together every month in a page of charts and graphs. Find the Google Zeitgeist at this location:

www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html

The highlight of the monthly Zeitgeist is the double list of the top ten gaining and declining search queries, as shown in Figure 17-1. These charts are compiled weekly, and tend to represent emerging and fading trends and fads.

Figure 17-1: The Google Zeitgeist. Scroll down to see more charts and graphs for the previous month.

Tip 

Click the Archived information available here link (on the left) to access stored gaining and declining query charts for the life of the Zeitgeist, back to early 2001.

Of particular interest to geekish users are the charts revealing the operating systems and browsers used to access Google. Scroll down the page a bit to see that data. The language chart is likewise fascinating and shows a long-term trend in which English is gradually losing its dominance.

Remember 

Click any link in any Zeitgeist list to launch a search on that keyword.

---