Forget the (potentially biased) small sample debate reaction thermometer - "the worm". Here's Google's alternative: total search traffic over the last year. The chart shows New Zealand search volumes for National (or the party Leader's name, or the Deputy Leader's name), Labour (or the Leader or Deputy), the Greens (or either Co-Leader), and ACT (or Brash or Banks). "Election" is included as a benchmark for overall election interest.
Let's zoom in on the last month: What do we see? Almost as much Google traffic on "National Party" as on "Election"; the Greens overtaking Labour in search traffic, though not by as much as in prior elections; and, ACT trailing, though not by as much as I'd expected.
The regional breakdowns are fun too, but not easily embedded. More grist for trading at iPredict. Or, at least it would be if they provided real-time traffic data.
Posts tonen met het label Google Search Insights. Alle posts tonen
Posts tonen met het label Google Search Insights. Alle posts tonen
maandag 21 november 2011
zondag 18 september 2011
An interesting error
I'd last week wondered whether long term decline in celebrity search interest predicts release of private photographs.
Turns out, my results were wrong. I'd provided search traffic data on "Scarlett Johannson", not on "Scarlett Johansson". The former, a typo, had long term decline, followed by a surge in interest with the release of artistically-shot nude photos from her cell phone; the latter has a noisy but flat long term curve with, again, a massive spike in search interest with the photo release.
In my defence, I'm not the only one that got the name wrong. This one's funny as the misspelled name in the Washington Post headline is matched with a cover of GQ (as part of the WP story) where the name is spelled right.
The graphs are up as an update to the original post.
It's interesting that the version with the typo has long term decline while the correct spelling has noisy but stable interest: the proportion of people interested in searching for Scarlett is increasingly made up of folks who know how to spell her name. But, with the photo release, we get a spike in all searches on the name, including those spelling it incorrectly. Unfortunately, you can't compare search volumes unless you put them on the same graph; when you put them on the same graph, volume on the typo normalizes to zero for the period prior to the photo release, after which it increases to 1 (searches on the properly spelled name normalize to 100 with the photo release). It would be mildly interesting to see if a greater proportion of searches post-photo include the typo.
Turns out, my results were wrong. I'd provided search traffic data on "Scarlett Johannson", not on "Scarlett Johansson". The former, a typo, had long term decline, followed by a surge in interest with the release of artistically-shot nude photos from her cell phone; the latter has a noisy but flat long term curve with, again, a massive spike in search interest with the photo release.
In my defence, I'm not the only one that got the name wrong. This one's funny as the misspelled name in the Washington Post headline is matched with a cover of GQ (as part of the WP story) where the name is spelled right.
The graphs are up as an update to the original post.
It's interesting that the version with the typo has long term decline while the correct spelling has noisy but stable interest: the proportion of people interested in searching for Scarlett is increasingly made up of folks who know how to spell her name. But, with the photo release, we get a spike in all searches on the name, including those spelling it incorrectly. Unfortunately, you can't compare search volumes unless you put them on the same graph; when you put them on the same graph, volume on the typo normalizes to zero for the period prior to the photo release, after which it increases to 1 (searches on the properly spelled name normalize to 100 with the photo release). It would be mildly interesting to see if a greater proportion of searches post-photo include the typo.
donderdag 15 september 2011
Searching for Scarlett [Updated]
Update below: scroll to bottom please. Yesterday's Twitter feed brought news that Scarlett Johannson's phone had apparently been hacked and that nude pictures had been posted on the web. Let's see what Google Insights for Search can tell us.
First, we can see a long decline in search interest after a peak in January 2006. There have been spikes along the way, but the trend isn't good for Scarlett if search interest correlates with other measures of star appeal. But see that little up-tick at the end? That's what happened after the apparently fairly tame (I haven't looked, honest) pictures found their way out of her phone and onto the web.
Let's zoom in on the past year:
I wonder whether long term decline in search interest can predict whether nude pictures or sex tapes accidentally find their way onto the web.*
Apologies if the embedded graphs suffer a form of link-rot; it seems not to let me embed particular date ranges but rather only "2004 to present" or "last 12 months". If the effect looks odd and you're reading this sometime after the post date, just hit the link back to Google and restrict the search range appropriately.
* You might also wonder whether bloggers that put some value on inflating SiteMeter stats have incentive to come up with excuses to add words like "Scarlett Johannson" and "nude" into their posts. And I would be shocked! if you thought that such considerations ever entered my mind. I'd tweeted yesterday predicting a spike in Search Insights; I'm today pleased to see the prediction bear out. Nothing more. If you've come here searching for "hot nude photos of Scarlett Johannson", I'm sorry to have disappointed. But folks with such prurient interest might like to check out my posts on the economics of pornography and of prostitution, though I promise that those posts are only intellectually titillating.
UPDATE: The results above are erroneous. Why? Because the search above includes a typo. If we search on "Scarlett Johansson", the proper spelling of her name, instead of "Scarlett Johannson", we get a different picture. Instead of long term decline, we get a noisy stable level of interest:
The massive hike in interest with the photo release is real though. Just look at the numbers for the last year:
First, we can see a long decline in search interest after a peak in January 2006. There have been spikes along the way, but the trend isn't good for Scarlett if search interest correlates with other measures of star appeal. But see that little up-tick at the end? That's what happened after the apparently fairly tame (I haven't looked, honest) pictures found their way out of her phone and onto the web.
Let's zoom in on the past year:
I wonder whether long term decline in search interest can predict whether nude pictures or sex tapes accidentally find their way onto the web.*
Apologies if the embedded graphs suffer a form of link-rot; it seems not to let me embed particular date ranges but rather only "2004 to present" or "last 12 months". If the effect looks odd and you're reading this sometime after the post date, just hit the link back to Google and restrict the search range appropriately.
* You might also wonder whether bloggers that put some value on inflating SiteMeter stats have incentive to come up with excuses to add words like "Scarlett Johannson" and "nude" into their posts. And I would be shocked! if you thought that such considerations ever entered my mind. I'd tweeted yesterday predicting a spike in Search Insights; I'm today pleased to see the prediction bear out. Nothing more. If you've come here searching for "hot nude photos of Scarlett Johannson", I'm sorry to have disappointed. But folks with such prurient interest might like to check out my posts on the economics of pornography and of prostitution, though I promise that those posts are only intellectually titillating.
UPDATE: The results above are erroneous. Why? Because the search above includes a typo. If we search on "Scarlett Johansson", the proper spelling of her name, instead of "Scarlett Johannson", we get a different picture. Instead of long term decline, we get a noisy stable level of interest:
The massive hike in interest with the photo release is real though. Just look at the numbers for the last year:
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