Google Trends and Data Analysis

19th May 2006

posted in edtech, literacy |

Google Trends provides a window into the search habits of the world. You can enter a search term and instead of seeing Google search results, you see an analysis of how frequently that term has been used in global searches. The global distribution of searches is also shown. This is an amazing tool, and I can think of a lot of research projects that students could do for school projects that would utilize “Google Trends” and its power. According to the website:

Google Trends aims to provide insights into broad search patterns. As a Google Labs product, it is still in the early stages of development. Also, it is based upon just a portion of our searches, and several approximations are used when computing your results. Please keep this in mind when using it.

Just for grins, I did some searches for the names of my two favorite educational theorists, John Dewey and Paulo Freire. Here is the search for “john dewey” showing cities where people are searching for his name most on Google:

Another tab is available showing the countries where these searches are originating:

I wonder why so many more people are googling “John Dewey” in Puerto Rico?

Here is the city trend report for Brazilian pedagogical visionary Paulo Freire:

Recife is the city in Brazil where Freire grew up. Country results are:

The USA is not even on the top 10 list! More US educators, students, and other citizens/residents need to be searching for and reading about Freire and his ideas!

Popup menus let you refine your search trend results by region and date. You also can compare two different searches, as I have shown here for “john dewey, paulo freire”:

Interesting that more Danish speakers seem to be searching for either Dewey or Freire than English speakers.

I can see the possibilities for data analysis here are really unlimited. Bounded only by the imagination and creativity of the user. Wouldn’t this be a fantastic tool to use in schools to help students analyze and understand data?

On this day..

Looking beyond coercion, tests and seat time - 2008
links for 2008-05-19 - 2008
Video in schools and underlying pedagogies - 2006
No cross-post this week - 2006
Copyright Communication Policy - 2004
Some images just shouldn't be seen - 2004

This entry was posted on Friday, May 19th, 2006 at 4:06 pm and is filed under edtech, literacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

1 On May 19th, 2006, Doug Noon said:

Oh great! Just what I need, another way to mess around with the internet looking at what other people are doing. You’re right about the possibilities it has for some kinds of research, and I can only wonder about what I might personally do with it.

It appears that your link to Google Trends should not have the trailing slash, as that generates a 404 [The requested URL /trends/ was not found on this server.] error message.

Gotta go play and see who is interested in…ahh…who cares? : )

2 On May 19th, 2006, Google Trends and Data AnalysisGoogle Trends provides a window into -- Centplus Tech Blog said:

[...] Google Trends and Data AnalysisGoogle Trends provides a window into the search habits of the world. You can enter a search term and instead of seeing Google search results, you see an analysis of how frequently that term has been used in global searches. … [...]

3 On May 20th, 2006, Borderland » Blog Archive » Making Inferences said:

[...] Thanks Wesley. [...]

4 On May 20th, 2006, Google must shape up, IIGoogle must shape up, II: Ironic… -- Centplus Tech Blog said:

5 On May 20th, 2006, Wesley Fryer said:

Thanks for the catch on the typo Doug, indeed the address DOES need to leave the slash off: http://www.google.com/trends.

6 On May 28th, 2006, content to be different » Blog Archive » Trendy media said:

[...] news Wesley Fryer comments on Google trends, another tool from the ‘do no evil’ masters of the webiverse. Google trends allows you to do a search and see how many times that search term has been entered and the global distribution of those searches. [...]