Sunday, May 14, 2006

Google Trends

Google Trends, a new feature, allows you to tap into Google's database of searches to determine what's popular. Unlike Google Zeitgeist, a long-running feature which lists trends that are becoming more and less popular, Google Trends allows for customization. You can specify what's being tracked, you can do comparisons of up to five terms, you can see the volume of queries over time, by city, regions, languages and so on. Check here for details.

John Battelle, author of the (wonderful) book The Search describes the information gleaned by what people are typing into Google's search box as the "database of our intentions". Having access to this information may prove powerful indeed...

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

No comments: