stevenberlinjohnson.com: Query Of The Year

No one loves the annual Google Zeitgeist ritual more than I do, but it has been getting raves everywhere, so I thought I'd just register a few objections.

1. The timeline looks nice, but almost all the graphs tell the same story: when some news event happens, people search on the keywords involved in the news. No way! Pim Fortuyn dies, suddenly there are lots of requests for Pim Fortuyn. Flip through the timeline and ask yourself: how many of these charts tell you something you didn't know already?

2. Where's the porn? Are the top requests really that clean? There's not a porn search anywhere (except Anna Kournikova, of course.)

3. Scooby Doo is number 5 on the top movie chart, and Lord Of The Rings is number 10. Surely this is a typo. I have to believe this is a typo.

Of course, the great thing about Google these days is that with the release of the Google APIs, we might well see dozens of comparable year-end portraits for 2003, collated by Googlewatchers all over the web. Let a thousand Zeitgeists bloom!

The Basics

I'm a father of three boys, husband of one wife, and author of eight books, and co-founder of three web sites. We spend most of the year in Marin County, California though I'm on the road a lot giving talks. (You can see the full story here.) Personal correspondence should go to sbeej68 at gmail dot com. If you're interested in having me speak at an event, drop a line to Wesley Neff at the Leigh Bureau (WesN at Leighbureau dot com.)

My Books

Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation
An exploration of environments that lead to breakthrough innovation, in science, technology, business, and the arts. I conceived it as the closing book in a trilogy on innovative thinking, after Ghost Map and Invention. But in a way, it completes an investigation that runs through all the books. Sold more copies in hardcover than anything else I've written.
The Invention of Air
The story of the British radical chemist Joseph Priestley, who ended up having a Zelig-like role in the American Revolution. My version of a founding fathers book, and a reminder that most of the Enlightenment was driven by open source ideals.
The Ghost Map
The latest: the story of a terrifying outbreak of cholera in 1854 London 1854 that ended up changing the world. An idea book wrapped around a page-turner. I like to think of it as a sequel to Emergence if Emergence had been a disease thriller. You can see a trailer for the book here.
Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter
The title says it all. This one sparked a slightly insane international conversation about the state of pop culture -- and particularly games. There were more than a few dissenters, but the response was more positive than I had expected. And it got me on The Daily Show, which made it all worthwhile.
Mind Wide Open : Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life
My first best-seller, and the only book I've written in which I appear as a recurring character, subjecting myself to a battery of humiliating brain scans. The last chapter on Freud and the neuroscientific model of the mind is one of my personal favorites.
Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software
The story of bottom-up intelligence, from slime mold to Slashdot. Probably the most critically well-received all my books, and the one that has influenced the most eclectic mix of fields: political campaigns, web business models, urban planning, the war on terror.
Interface Culture : How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate
My first. The book I wrote instead of finishing my dissertation. Still in print almost a decade later, and still relevant, I think. But I haven't read it in a while, so who knows what's in there!

Comments

I used to work in the engineering group for a search engine company. The published lists don't show the real requests. There are a huge number of porn requests.

Posted by: David | December 13, 2002 at 06:25 AM

The only thing I can think to explain some of the results, like Scooby Doo beating Lord of the Rings, is that ANY search for Scooby Doo gets listed under that movie. Maybe?

Although, with that theory, Powerpuff Girls would probably end up being number one.

Peter

Posted by: Peter | December 13, 2002 at 10:48 AM

A better list of poluar 2002 movie searches. Methinks Yahoo Buzz offers a little bit more human attention to collecting related terms and weeding out false positives (i.e. - Scooby Doo halloween costumes, etc.) -- Still, Scooby was number 6, so don't doubt the power of Freddy Prinze Jr and Sarah Michelle Gellar (Buffy fans are net freaks...)

Posted by: harold | December 13, 2002 at 12:41 PM

one of the things I enjoyed about the Lycos 50 was when they were puzzled by search terms and didn't know why people were looking! I can't seem to find that feature on their site these days.

Posted by: Anita Rowland | December 13, 2002 at 12:52 PM

Maybe I'm not as familiar with the Google APIs as I should be, but how would access to them let you compile lists of what >other people are searching for?

Posted by: Chris | December 15, 2002 at 03:02 AM

I think the reason LOTR scored so low, is that more fans of LOTR are web savvy than fans of Scooby Doo. Therefore, LOTR fans go right to the movie web page, rather than search on google for it. The Zeitgiest only shows results for the googleverse and applies only there.

Posted by: John Frost | December 15, 2002 at 03:12 AM

Another possible explanation for LOR's low ranking in the GZ. Shorter searches rise to the top in rankings like this. Longer searches get diluted by alternate spellings.

So for LOR, some people will have searched for "The Lord of the Rings;" others for "The Two Towers;" others, for "Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers."

The Zeitgeist researchers may not have combined all the likely LOR searches into a single figure.

Also, bear in mind that the people compiling GZ have no way to distinguish single-keyword searches about Spiderman the comic book from single-keyword searches about Spiderman the movie. Properties that have "alternate lives" in the Googleverse (like Harry Potter, Star Wars, and yes, LOR (but see below)) will tend to rank higher. Adjusting for this factor, "The Ring" might actually be ranked lower than it deserves.

One last thing about LOR: it's the only film on the list that hasn't been released yet. In my experience, searches on film names spike after the film's release. Which is only common sense.

-Chris

Posted by: Chris | December 15, 2002 at 04:25 AM

A lot of search is today done by typing the adress directly.

Posted by: JJ | January 07, 2003 at 06:45 AM