Earlier today, I was browsing through some pages on Google (the Google Press Center, actually), when I discovered yet another one of Google's features: the Google Zeitgeist page.
Sprechen sie Deutsch? No? Then what does Zeitgeist
mean? Well, to find out the meaning, you can use the Google language tools
and choose "German to English" translation. It literally means
"spirit of the time". Or alternatively, you can consult Wikipedia (the world-famous Wiki Encyclopedia) to find out the meaning of the word. The alternative explanation is interesting: "...it denotes the intellectual and cultural climate of an era". And what better medium than the Internet to capture that climate?
The Google Zeitgeist represents an interesting compilation of the most searched words (or combination of words) on the most popular search engine on the Internet. There are a lot of interesting conclusions one could draw. Can the top 10 gaining queries be used as an indicator of which artists' or athletes' popularities are on the rise? Perhaps. But surely, my guess is that a lot of the athletes (e.g. Carly Patterson, Svetlana Khorkina, Paul Hamm, Michael Phelps) that have been gaining searches did so because of the advent of the Olympics - it would be interesting to see how long they hold. The story is different with soccer, the world's most popular sport. So Cristiano Ronaldo (the Portuguese born soccer player for Manchester United) and Ronaldinho (the Brazilian soccer star currently playing for Barcelona) should stay on the top 5 list for popular athletes image searches.
But artists would probably have a bit more "staying power" on the Google "top search lists". But if Chloë Sevigny makes it to the top 10 gaining inquiries list, can that be a sign that she is a rising star? Events (such as Hurricane Charley) might generate a lot of traffic before, during or shortly after their occurrence, but quickly drop off the popular lists. Ditto for movies (e.g. Shrek 2, which made it to France's July popular queries list) or computer games new releases (e.g. Doom3, which is on the declining queries list for July).
Regardless of the validity of inferences that can be made about such "most popular" queries, researching them can be a useful exercise. Not only that, this activity could be used in a different context as well, searching for the most popular technology news; knowing those can be helpful in identifying some technology trends, or changes in public sentiment towards an existing product.