Notes from the Field | Robert X. Cringely® » And now for something completely silly

April 27, 2007 | Comments: (0)

And now for something completely silly

TAGS: Cringe

Can't work, can't sleep. My surly yet sagacious editor is all over me, wanting me to blog blog blog til my fingertips are bleeding and my brain feels like guacamole. But I can't, because I'm too busy playing with Google Trends.

Dial up the Trends engine on the Google Labs subsite, type in a search term or phrase, and you can see not only how often people searched for that term but also the cities where they live. Google uses searchers' IP addresses to extrapolate their location.

Did you know that the Tennessee/Kentucky border is the incontinence capital of the continent? When it comes to searches for "bedwetting," the good folks in Kingsport, TN, hold a nearly insurmountable lead over Portland, Minneapolis, and Salt Lake City.

Run a search on "bestiality" (or "beastiality") and an alarming number of Australian cities show up in the top 10. Kinda makes you wonder what they're doing down under.

Some results are obvious. Washington DC is the capital of "political corruption" (not that we needed Google to tell us that). Search for "Linux" and Bangalore, Chennai, and Mumbai, India, show up in the top 10.The phrase "Microsoft sucks" puts Seattle on top (disgruntled Redmonites, perhaps?), though Google only shows searches beginning in late January 2007. Something happened around that time, but I just can't seem to remember what it was.

Oddly, the phrase "Google Trends" is most popular in Tehran, Iran. (I feel a conspiracy theory coming on.) Surprisingly, the term "Cringely sucks" produces no results whatsoever, though I get a feeling that's about to change.

What does Google Trends tell you? Post your comments down yonder or drop me a line here. Top tipsters will receive a Cringely bag filled with Depends. (Offer good only for residents of Northern Tennessee.)

Posted by Robert X. Cringely on April 27, 2007 06:05 AM

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