{"id":437,"date":"2009-03-30T00:01:12","date_gmt":"2009-03-30T07:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=437"},"modified":"2017-10-15T14:00:41","modified_gmt":"2017-10-15T21:00:41","slug":"google-zeitgeist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=437","title":{"rendered":"Google Zeitgeist"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zeitgeist is a term meaning the spirit of the times. A zeitgeist defines a mood or a theme. For Google, the zeitgeist tells you what’s hot as far as search terms are concerned. It’s a telling insight into the culture’s current state of mind.
\n
\nGoogle does it’s ZeitGeist annually. You can read the summary for 2008 here<\/a>. According to that page, here are the top Google search terms for 2008:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. sarah palin<\/li>\n
  2. beijing 2008<\/li>\n
  3. facebook login<\/li>\n
  4. tuenti<\/li>\n
  5. heath ledger<\/li>\n
  6. obama<\/li>\n
  7. nasza klasa<\/li>\n
  8. wer kennt wen<\/li>\n
  9. euro 2008<\/li>\n
  10. jonas brothers<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Curious that Ms. Palin beat out Mr. Obama. No wonder the Democrats were so frightened of her!<\/p>\n

    Google only does its Zeitgeist annually, but for the United States, you can track the top 100 search terms in Google Trends<\/a>. It’s a telling list.<\/p>\n

    For example, for March 29 (yesterday), the top search term was carthage nc<\/code>, which is Carthage, North Carolina where there was a shooting at a nursing home. But other top hits are more interesting:<\/p>\n

    7. patti davis playboy<\/code><\/p>\n

    Is that President Reagan’s daughter? Weird. Of course number 76 was expected: paris hilton sextape paris<\/code>.<\/p>\n

    I didn’t find any Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan links, which I found unusual. (They should contact their agents!) Of course, there are many links to names I don’t recognize, probably various people-of-the-moment. Even when I was younger, I considered myself out of touch with who was who, specifically with regards to television and music.<\/p>\n

    I wonder what made this one popular this week:<\/p>\n

    63. vasectomies<\/code><\/p>\n

    I used to watch the Dark Shadows<\/em> horror-soap opera when I was a kid, but I’m curious as to why it’s popular now:<\/p>\n

    15. dark shadows
    \n78. dark shadows tv show<\/code><\/p>\n

    I remember seeing this film a long time ago:<\/p>\n

    71. picnic at hanging rock<\/code><\/p>\n

    This film made the list for some reason:<\/p>\n

    92. 50 first dates<\/code><\/p>\n

    I suppose none of this really has to make sense. After all, it’s merely the zeitgeist, which by definition is temporary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Zeitgeist is a term meaning the spirit of the times. A zeitgeist defines a mood or a theme. For Google, the zeitgeist tells you what’s hot as far as search terms are concerned. It’s a telling insight into the culture’s current state of mind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=437"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9215,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437\/revisions\/9215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}