Mining for Data

One product direction emerging from Google Labs scans the millions upon millions of searches and offers trends based on specific terms. Two products currently in the lab are Google Trends and Google Music Trends.

Google Trends

What’s new and interesting in consumer electronics? Or fishing poles? Or steamer trunks? Find out using Google Trends, a feature that automatically reviews aggregate data and calculates trends based on a percentage. That is, how many searches have looked for the terms you typed compared to the total number of searches conducted in a specific time period? The results are based on a sample of the total number of searches conducted and displayed as a search-volume graph, as shown in Figure 40.21.

Figure 40.21: The returns are shown as linear graphs and identify the percentage of all searches that included your search terms.

The graph also displays a news-reference graph that shows the number of times your search terms appeared in Google News stores. Spikes in volume result in a news story from the time of the spike. The story is automatically selected from Google News. Below the news reference graph are listed the top cities, regions, and languages for the first search term you used.

Note 

If you use search operators in your search terms, the news-reference graph isn’t displayed.

Use these rules and tips when using Google Trends:

• Compare up to five terms separated by commas.

• Include and exclude search terms using common search operators, such as (−) to exclude returns containing a particular term.

• Find an exact term by enclosing your search results in quotation marks.

• Restrict your returns to a specific time frame or region by choosing options from the drop-down boxes in the upper-right corner of the results page.

• The results shown by city are ranked by a search ratio, as shown in Figure 40.22. A sample of all searches in the listed cities is compared to the number of searches conducted for your first search term. The Regions and Languages searches work in the same way as the Cities searches.

Figure 40.22: Filter the returns from your search by time frame or region.

Caution 

Check the Terms of Use for the Trends features. The results from both Google Trends and Google Music Trends are free for you to use, but they must be attributed to Google.

Google Music Trends

Google Music Trends is a way to examine global tastes in music, at least among those using Google Talk. Music Trends is a voting system whereby each time you share your music status online through a music engine, you are voting for the music you are playing. The larger the pool of participants, logically, the more accurately the musical tastes are profiled.

Cross-Ref 

Music Trends is a feature of Google Talk, the subject of Chapter 20.

Setting up the tracking

To participate in Google Music Trends, you must configure several settings and tools, including these:

• Download and install Google Talk, available at www.google.com/talk.

• Indicate that you have one of the supported music players, including iTunes, Winamp, Windows Media Player, or Yahoo Music Engine.

• Opt in to the Music Trends system. On Google Talk, click Settings to open the Settings dialog box, and click Audio in the column at the left of the dialog box. In the Audio settings, select Share music listening history with Google Music Trends.

• Share your music status in Google Talk. Click the Status down arrow, and choose Show Current Music Track from the Available or Busy section, as shown in Figure 40.23.

Figure 40.23: Activate music tracking from the Google Talk Status menu.

The music status is automatically updated each time your player starts a new song. When the music stops, the status displays the default Available or Busy message. Change the status to an Available or Busy message to stop contributing data to the Music Trends results.

Note 

Opting in to Music Trends enables Personalized Search in Google to include your music history with your Search History along with Web, video, image, and other searches.

Viewing the results

The Google Music Trends results are updated every night. At the time of this writing, Music Trends are shown for ten countries. Votes from participants not living in one of the listed countries are included in the All Countries grand totals.

View the results at www.google.com/trends/music. From the results page, you can do these things:

• Click a song’s title or artist to open the entries in Google’s Music Search, a service providing links to online music stores where you can buy the track or album.

• Filter the trend results. Click the Genre down arrow, and choose an option from the available list. Not all countries filter by genre. Click the Country down arrow, and choose a country from the drop-down list. You can also filter by both country and genre, as shown in Figure 40.24.

Figure 40.24: Filter the Google Music Trends results by country and genre.