Google Correlate - Draw

http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/draw?p=us

by mshafrir • 13 years ago

223 63 13 years ago

google.com

asselinpaul• 13 years ago

This is rather awesome.

solox3• 13 years ago

Very useful for looking up what people care about: http://i.imgur.com/puNZMco.png

1. (antidepressant drug) 2. "county jail" 3. "google" 4. "detention center" 5. (vinyl music database)

scribu• 13 years ago

Seems like the typical "pre-Plus" Google project: limited usefulness, but interesting from an engineering standpoint.

Noticed that it still contains share buttons for two defunct Google services: Google Buzz and Google Reader

mjschultz• 13 years ago

It's also using dygraphs javascript visualizations for the timeseries instead of Google Charts.

iskander• 13 years ago

This was one of the many projects that got gutted by Plus, I'm surprised that it's still being hosted at all.

hayksaakian• 13 years ago

Bad news for "linux"

http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id%3AWuHjnma...

Wow, I can share with Google buzz. /nostalgia

devcpp2• 13 years ago

I tried the same curve and got open source and free software. This is rather depressing but it's predictable.

rattray3• 13 years ago

predictable? how so?

rattray3• 13 years ago

interesting...

seems "Ubuntu" hasn't fared quite as bad? http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=ubuntu&t=wee...

EDIT: Seems Ubuntu may have overtaken a huge portion of Linux searches, but maybe growth started to fall off with the introduction of Windows 7? http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=ubuntu#q=ubuntu%2C%20...

simonh• 13 years ago

It's not necessarily as bad as it seems because this is relative to overall search term popularity. As more non-techies adopted the Internet, the prevalence of all techie topics declined, some more than others. E.g. Python is more popular as ever, but it's search term interest peaked in 2006, even though it's absolute search numbers increased nicely.

I don't think google do trend graphs for absolute search numbers, so one way to approximate that is to compare the graphs for competing terms using Google Trends (1). So to get a feel for how popular Python is, compare it's trend graph to say Java or Ruby.

Another factor I suspect may be relevant for Linux is that the rise of prominent distros has probably sapped away search term activity for general searches for Linux.

(1) http://www.google.co.uk/trends/explore

jvm• 13 years ago

I wouldn't read too much into that trend, all desktop operating systems declined:

http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=Mac+OS+X,+Linux,+Wind...

Ubuntu really does win though among the linuxes:

http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=Ubuntu,OpenSuse,Debia...

My favorite linux is on the rise, albeit from a tiny baseline:

http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=Archlinux&cmpt=q

At least the mobile OSes are doing well:

http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=Mac+OS+X,+Linux,+Wind...

NPC82• 13 years ago

This one made me laugh.

http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:bnqK1ZVJS...

thetwiceler• 13 years ago

Anyone know why "bruising" and "brown spots" are common in the summer? Not as nice as the canonical answer of "ice cream"...

http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:UfmYZwmin...

In case you're wondering what's popular in winter: it's lots of diseases!

marc• 13 years ago

Just Google these words and add the word 'summer' to get some ideas. Here's what I came up with:

Bruising: More children play outside in the summer → more bruises → more parents/children(?) Googling for it. Brown spots: Might be referring to brown spots in someone's lawn due to the weather? Or summer freckles?

andymatuschak• 13 years ago

Stone fruit (peaches, plums, apricots, nectarines) are in season in the summer and easily bruise and get brown spots when they overripen.

ishansharma• 13 years ago

My first try got me "free Blackberry software"

http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id%3AUbuw550...

kh_hk• 13 years ago

I got "blackberry support", spot on

http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id%3AWbipmJ-...

noja• 13 years ago

I drew a penis, and it correlated with www.mail.google.com

baseh• 13 years ago

Strange, in my case, it correlated with the NSA. Well, I may have drawn a bigger one.

ghshephard• 13 years ago

2011: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2385932,00.asp

magnet_ball• 13 years ago

Very neat to find local trends. Try drawing a boom (immediate spike) at some point in time to find something that trended highly back then.

_delirium2• 13 years ago

This is a great brainstorming tool for doing light blogspam-style "journalism", if your readers don't know about it (which they probably don't). Draw something with a rather unlikely looking feature— a graph that strikes the reader as quite definitely not just random noise. See if you get anything interesting in return. If yes, conjure up a backstory, and write up a post in a confident, assertive tone, that closes with the graph as your "care to explain this?!" evidence nailing home your suspicion.

benologist• 13 years ago

That's far too much effort when they can just monitor RSS feeds and reword someone else's work.

solistice• 13 years ago

Why do you think they'd actually monitor those themselves? Get a bot to monitor them, and a text spinner to reword the texts.

CompelTechnic• 13 years ago

confirmation bias in its most unadulterated form. excellent.

_delirium2• 13 years ago

In a way it's even an improvement on confirmation bias. With confirmation bias, you have a conclusion you want to sell, and selectively search for evidence that might support it. But with this suggestion, you search for interesting evidence, and then invent a conclusion that it might support, post-hoc.

Strilanc• 13 years ago

It's actually cherry picking, not confirmation bias.

ZirconCode• 13 years ago

Draw a positive line which abruptly goes to 0 and invent conspiracy theories about what they're trying to hide from us.

Is brooks pharmacy being censored by the government?! (1) Doctors hate them, lobbyists~ etc...

Source: http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:5J79rEBVG...

wyager• 13 years ago

http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id%3AEJ2JLv5...

boulem• 13 years ago

http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:zmsMT3XqC...

ok, so porn links are allowed in this

kyle_martin1• 13 years ago

Staircase growth then major drop = Yahoo

http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:g1F7bodyg...

platz• 13 years ago

Pasta Salad spikes (July 4th anyone?) http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=pasta+salad&...

JulienSchmidt• 13 years ago

Is the metric system cool now? http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id%3AJrnBhwp...

daenz• 13 years ago

The whitepaper describes an approximate nearest neighbor algorithm, but I thought this would use some form of signal decomposition...Discrete Cosine Transform or Fourier Transform.

oakwhiz• 13 years ago

If I recall correctly, that only works on periodic signals, and not all the Google keyword trends are periodic.

hornbaker• 13 years ago

My first try, with a hockey-stick growth pattern starting 2007. Expected a match with "twitter," instead got "baby poop."

http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:iOj8ICadD...

zmitri• 13 years ago

I believe twitter didn't start seeing crazy growth until 2009 once they focus on activating their users and moving away from the idea that everyone needs to tweet to use twitter.

Google trends seems to confirm 2009 was when it started to really work too http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=twitter#q=twitter&cmp...

evanmoran• 13 years ago

I tried drawing a "hockey stick" graph and stopped too soon. Got wamu =).

http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:Bds44NUk_...

We miss you wamu!

vowelless• 13 years ago

Spikes in 2008 and 2012: http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:pBuWinPLv...

whitewhim• 13 years ago

Peak in 2005 and than a linear decline: "Linux firefox". http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id%3AI9yHeUP...

malkia• 13 years ago

Make 100% on 2005, 2007, 2009, etc. and you'll have Cirque Du Soleil visits in San Francisco!

gtrubetskoy• 13 years ago

The implementation probably uses SAX (Symbolic Aggregate approXimation). http://code.google.com/p/jmotif/wiki/SAX

vxNsr2• 13 years ago

what happened to htomail.com ? ;) http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id%3AZYTVOj4...

. . . . . . .

Pulled from a search farther down in the comments section: Why was this a question... ever?

http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id%3ApBuWinP...

freehunter• 13 years ago

That's a pretty legitimate question. At that time, LED TVs were starting to be marketed pretty heavily. I myself didn't understand what an LED TV was. Turns out it's an LCD but with an LED backlight, so it runs cooler and uses less electricity.

The question isn't really the difference between LED and LCD, it's the difference between an LCD TV and an LCD TV with an LED backlight.

vxNsr2• 13 years ago

Hmmm... I guess I was kinda drunk when I asked that question because I read: "What's the difference between LSD and LED?"

hnriot• 13 years ago

This reminds me of the fun I had in high school writing "shell oil" on my calculator.

nrj• 13 years ago

This would also be cool if instead of search terms you could see stock prices.

dkersten• 13 years ago

Power rangers dino thunder apparently made some kind of comeback.

http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id%3AFlLikxM...

barista• 13 years ago

"Please sign in to use this tool." That's all I see when I am not signed in. Too confident on Google's part that the people will always be signed in or do they actually need any personal info to use this tool?

mortehu• 13 years ago

Maybe it's a rate limiting thing? This is a relatively expensive search, and they probably don't want people to mechanically download all the graphs. The UI does support uploading your own time series data.

gabipurcaru• 13 years ago

Tried a downhill curve and I got yahoo.com http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:IwiF_9hYU...

sirius87• 13 years ago

Thing I found most interesting about this is - it allows you to 'Share' your results on Google Buzz, Google Reader and, most shockingly, Facebook.

graup• 13 years ago

Apparently the internet was (comparatively) less funny between 2006 and 2012: http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id%3AO6yJxan...

danialtz• 13 years ago

Can someone elaborate on the method they use?

dakimov• 13 years ago

This is hilarious.

Google Correlate - Draw

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