29 Jun 09, 4:46 PM
AstronautMikeDexter
UK(E), 2 yrs |
doulos wrote:
I threw some dummy words into google trends and came up with some equally funny downward trends so I think this experiment may be picking up on some more general variable (either that or people are much less interested in "linguistics" than they were in 2004). My guess is that the search engine market might be getting more segmented. Remember Microsoft sneakily built live search into their new windows explorer a couple of years ago which might be peeling off some more casual users. And there are probably better search engines for finding kinky stuff anyway.
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The most likely explanation is probably a lot more mundane. The graphs we're seeing is of an index value calculated by google. Perhaps that calculation has changed over time or perhaps the way they gather their data has changed over time (becoming more or less strict). The data is also normalised, what normalisaition do they use? What is it sensitive to? Have they changed that over time?
Unless you have clear answers to these sorts of things you can't really draw any firm conclusions about these slight downward trends. ---
Ha!
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29 Jun 09, 5:01 PM
Admin
UK, 14 yrs
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doulos wrote:
I threw some dummy words into google trends and came up with some equally funny downward trends so I think this experiment may be picking up on some more general variable (either that or people are much less interested in "linguistics" than they were in 2004). My guess is that the search engine market might be getting more segmented.
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Segmentation could also take the form of more words from Chinese languages and Persian etc being used in searches.
Btw I don't believe the Google trends results for IC either: they flat out disagree with the Google Analytics graphs and IC's own logging, which have things basically flat at about 10,000 unique visitors per day, with weekly ripples, rather than going up and down by 50% this year.
Regards,
Admin
Remember: it's only a website 
But never forget that time is finite 
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29 Jun 09, 5:12 PM
El_Presidente
UK(G), 4 yrs
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Danbuc wrote:
Perhaps that calculation has changed over time or perhaps the way they gather their data has changed over time (becoming more or less strict).
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Surely that would cause step changes rather than a gradual decline?
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The data is also normalised, what normalisaition do they use? What is it sensitive to? Have they changed that over time?
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Google haven't released what the exact meaning of the 'y' axis is, but I can only speculate that it tracks the number of searches for a particular term as a proportion of the total search volume of Google.
I suppose it must be inevitable that as one search item becomes more popular, all the others then appear correspondingly less popular. So, as people search for a more diverse range of services on the internet, the steadier, more 'traditional' internet search items appear to be in decline when they are normalised against total search volume. (Although 'porn' is a pretty traditional staple of the internet and yet that seems to be on the increase!)
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Unless you have clear answers to these sorts of things you can't really draw any firm conclusions about these slight downward trends.
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Clearly so, although it seems a little ironic that 'Google Trends' is not capable of accurately identifying trends!
"If you've got a date in Constantinople, she'll be waiting in Istanbul."
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29 Jun 09, 5:17 PM
El_Presidente
UK(G), 4 yrs
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Admin wrote:
Btw I don't believe the Google trends results for IC either: they flat out disagree with the Google Analytics graphs and IC's own logging, which have things basically flat at about 10,000 unique visitors per day, with weekly ripples, rather than going up and down by 50% this year.
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Prior to seeing what a farce Google Trends seems to be, I would have been inclined to take their figures as read, since they're a big company that specialises in this sort of thing, and therefore 'they must know what they're doing'.
However, you can't argue with the raw figures, so now I think I'd be inclined to take any of Google's data with a big pinch of salt.
"If you've got a date in Constantinople, she'll be waiting in Istanbul."
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29 Jun 09, 5:24 PM
AstronautMikeDexter
UK(E), 2 yrs |
Admin wrote:
Segmentation could also take the form of more words from Chinese languages and Persian etc being used in searches.
Btw I don't believe the Google trends results for IC either: they flat out disagree with the Google Analytics graphs and IC's own logging, which have things basically flat at about 10,000 unique visitors per day, with weekly ripples, rather than going up and down by 50% this year.
Regards,
Admin
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Kind of comparing apples to oranges there though. Trends plots what people are searching for via google. Not click through events or page views.---
Ha!
Edited 29 Jun 09, 5:25 PM by AstronautMikeDexter
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