It’s been awhile since I looked up Google’s zeitgeist, or “Google Trends” as it’s officially known. Here’s what’s going on.

If you’d like to see what’s current on the Google radar, visit https://trends.google.com/trends/. The zeitgeist is based on what people are looking for. Supposedly it’s not influenced by Google or pushed with any agenda, though many sites on the Internet dispute this.

It’s Sunday when I write this. In the US, the searches mostly have to do with current football games. That makes sense. So I decided to look into specific categories, but found that nothing interesting is trending now.

How about Donald Trump? Certainly he’s trending. According to my political friends on Facebook, he’s either the worst tyrant since Hitler or the second coming of Saint Ronald Reason.

Nope. Actually, it’s a calm week for The Donald. His zeitgeist peaked about a year ago — election time — and has been surprisingly mellow since then, as shown in Figure 1. You would think the world was coming apart . . .

Figure 1. Google zeitgeist interest in “Donald Trump.”

What else is topical? I’m so out of the loop. How about Miley Cyrus? Is she still relevant? Who is relevant? Let me compare Miley and Kim Kardashian, shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Zeitgeist for Kim Kardashian (blue) and Miley Cyrus (red).

I believe Kim is more dedicated to her brand. And I’m writing here as someone who has never seen Ms. Kardashian in any of her capacities. I know the name; I wouldn’t be able to pick her out of a lineup. I know who Miley is because of Hannah Montana more than the skank persona she adopted later.

How about some brotherly competition? Peyton Manning versus Eli Manning, shown in Figure 3. Peyton is doing quite well despite retirement. And I wonder if the spike around June is due to his comedic videos?

Figure 3. Peyton Manning (blue) and Eli Manning (red).

Remember that these results reflect what people are searching for or viewing, not how truly popular or effective a specific thing can be. I’m sure that advertising and marketing people enjoy (or not) looking at Google Trends. It’s just data, albeit fun date when you compare things that you’re interested in.