Let me start by explaining that Zeitgeist is defined as “spirit of the times”. South Africa and its people have experienced a lot of change during 2009 and the 2009 Google Zeitgeist shows that South Africans have been searching for their favourite websites, news and trends to keep up-to-date with what has been happening in South Africa and around the rest of the globe.

Google Zeitgeist breaks the most searched topics down in to six categories, namely: fastest rising, sports events, celebs events, most popular, politicians and recession queries. The lists are really interesting as a few surprises pop up in between the expected candidates in each category.

Take a look below to get sense of South Africa’s Zeitgeist for 2009:

Fastest Rising

1. facebook login
2. gumtree cape town
3. efiling
4. absa internet banking
5. yahoo mail
6. gmail.com
7. quotes
8. twitter
9. standard bank
10. junkmail cars

Most searched for sports events

1. super 14
2. IPL
3. cape argus
4. confederations cup
5. comrades marathon
6. currie cup
7. FA cup
8. british lions tour
9. absa premiership
10. nedbank golf

Most searched for celebs

1. DJ sbu
2. khanyi mbau
3. charlize theron
4. oscar pistorius
5. gareth cliff
6. trevor noah
7. joost van der westhuizen
8. nataniel
9. lira
10. danny k

Most Popular

1. facebook
2. yahoo
3. games
4. lyrics
5. jobs
6. gumtree
7. google
8. gmail
9. news
10. absa

Most searched for politician

1. nelson mandela
2. jacob zuma
3. julius malema
4. helen zille
5. robert mugabe
6. trevor manuel
7. mvume dandala
8. jackie selebi
9. patricia de lille
10. ian khama

Most searched recession queries

1. what is recession
2. credit crunch
3. surviving the recession
4. double dip recession
5. technical recession
6. recession cartoons
7. recession over
8. recession jokes
9. causes of recession
10. recession sa

Google has released its Zeitgeist for 2009 and this year has included a list of popular local search queries from 31 US Cities.

The US cities in Google’s local Zeitgeist include: Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Indianopolis, Kansas City (MO), Los Angeles, Madison, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland (OR), Raleigh, Sacramento, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, Tampa and Washington, D.C.

Google’s City by City Zeitgeist states: “They say all politics is local. Search can be local, too.”

Based on the keyword queries making up the majority of Google’s Local Search City by City  Zeitgeist Top 10 lists I would add… “almost all local search is navigational.”

Almost All Local Search Is Navigational

Anyone who, like me, is a nosey fact-hunting pig will love Google Zeitgeist 2009.

Where else would you find out that more people in the UK searched for ‘Susan Boyle’ than ‘Michael Jackson‘? Maybe they too were appalled by the pug-faced old croaker’s butchery of Wild Horses. I hope so. Here’s the real deal…

It’s good that Bing (s MSFT), Yahoo (s YHOO) and Google (s GOOG) can agree on at least one thing for their closely timed year-end search-term roundups: Michael Jackson was tops in 2009. But as we’ve been griping for years now, these lists are mostly useless and misinterpreted; Google doesn’t even give out the top search terms of the year, just a cleaned-up and condensed list of “fastest rising” global terms; Microsoft published a list of U.S.-centric “trending topics”; Yahoo’s description of its methodology is only that it centers on “crunching lists based on search data.” Cue the morning talk show hosts hyping up the fact that millions of people want to know about Twitter and swine flu. Why yes, Regis, that’s just so fascinating.

But then again, I’m a data junkie, so I still find myself poring through the pages of Google’s annual Zeitgeist package, finding that the top search term in my home city of San Francisco is apparently “fox theater oakland,” the most-searched U.S. song lyrics of the year are for Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face,” and of all the things Americans want to learn how to do, it’s “how to kiss.”

It’s also neat — though a little perplexing, given their extreme regional specificity — to see that four non-English terms made Google’s overall fastest-rising list: Spanish social network Tuenti, Turkish web game Sanalika, Vietnamese news site dantri.com.vn and the Brazilian term for free SMS, “torpedo gratis.” Oh, and Regis, the world apparently cared less about “Beijing 2008,” “Amy Winehouse” and “Bebo” in 2009 than it did the year before. You don’t say!

Estimados Vagos,

Esse post é basicamente para compilar as palavras em portugues mais buscadas em sites de busca e em tags nos maiores sites que hospedam blogs…

Como já disse, sou contra esse tipo de apelacao para alavancar a leitura do blog, mas seria mto engraçado provar essa teoria…

People share stories to preserve culture, to create order, to explain the universe, to teach societal values, and to entertain.  The Narrative Paradigm Theory, proposed by Walter R. Fisher claims all communication is a form of storytelling and all people experience and interpret life as a series of stories.  Each narration, with its own conflict, plot, intentions, characters, beginnings, middles, and ends, help us comprehend reality. 

I admit, I’m a communication theory geek.  My ears perk up when I read about language, society, identity construction, semiotics, and cultural narration. Don’t get me wrong, I have enjoyed learning about digital technologies and social media advances, but I have been waiting for the day where it all comes together and I have an AHA moment. 

This past week I read The Search.  In a single breath, the book is about Google and the history and future of search technology (but it’s so much more).  Right away, author John Battelle audaciously claims Google can tell us what our culture wants and answers any question we ask.  Google solves the riddles of business, politics, pop-culture and just about anything.  I asked myself…really?  Have we entered the Google Age? I thought, Google is great for email, organizing my RSS feeds, and Google scholar allows me to bypass some complicated scholarly sites, but can a search engine really know what our culture wants?  Until reading Battelle’s book, I hadn’t given much thought to Google as a cultural indicator or a “database of intentions.”  I continued to read past the intro and then it happened…my AHA moment of sorts.  Battelle talked about culture, storytelling, even semiotics…I was hooked.  I was ready to learn the story of Google and how we as a society have entered…the age of SEARCH. 

Google has the story everyone wants to read – a small unorthodox company, led by two egomaniacal guys, fight over power and money (with sites like Ask and Yahoo!) and basically find a way to gather the world’s information, organize it and make it universally accessible.  The story begins when Stanford students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin began dabbling with search technology in the 1990s.  In the end, the nonconformist company, with a “Do No Evil” philosophy has become the premier search engine.  Google has redefined business relationships, marketing, and philanthropy. 

I believe two major players can help make sense of Google’s story – search and intent.  Google offers the public, pure and organic search results.  We type in a key word and search allows us to navigate through an infinite amount of resources and find some answers.  Search can give us anything we want in the context of specific intent.  And there is the magic word – intent, without it search results would be disconnected, impersonal, and perhaps irrelevant.  Intent is the secret, the power, and the magic of Google search.  We search with specific intent, it’s a means to an end.  By typing a few words into the search engine we declare our desires and our questions.   Basically, the web has become a place to hold and analyze the world’s intentions.   

Search has become a mechanism to understand our world, our culture, and ourselves.  Searching with intent is how we journey through knowledge.  Now, we can see not only what people are looking for, but why.   You can imagine the endless implications for marketing, business, and technology.   The DEMO 09 conference discussed the future of intelligent web services.  Although most of technologies like Primal Fusion and Gazaro are far from being ready for distribution, they display the emerging, more understanding future of web technology.

So here is my interpretation of the Google story: Google’s complex algorithms give the web its language, search queries and clickstreams come together and give the web its culture.  Just like Ancient Mesopotamian tablets crystallized the story of Gilgamesh, and Gutenberg’s printing press immortalized our stories, Google and search allows us to hold language in our hands, read it and make sense of it.  

A narrative thread refers to certain elements of a story that guide the reader to the center of action or conflict.  The author will strategically thread each narrative together to create a powerful and meaningful story.  Battelle’s The Search not only offers us an exhaustive history lesson about Google, it also tells us the story of Google – the story of the our “search” culture.  With each search and with each clickstream we are creating mini-narratives when threaded together tell about our culture’s intentions. What does your narrative thread look like?  How do your queries mirror global search trends? What do your clickstreams and Google searches say about your intentions?  Does Google deliver useful answers?  I would suspect, most of the time Google does, and if it doesn’t, don’t worry the guys at Google are working tirelessly to figure out your intentions.  

And the story continues: see what Google should do in the future 

Google Stockpiling Cash: Storing Nuts for Economic Winter or Just Plain Nuts?

6 companies Google should buy right now

and follow The Official Google Blog

I remember the days when I had to use the library card catalog when working on a school report or had to pick up the corresponding Encyclopedia Britannica from my family’s bookshelf to settle a bet. Despite these memories, I still take today’s online search for granted. After reading The Search by John Battelle, I realized not only how little I knew about how Internet search even worked but more importantly how much it impacts my life.

I probably use Google search at least 20 to 30 times a day, and I am certainly not alone. A 2004 Pew Internet & American Life Project paper concluded that 85% of U.S. Internet users use search engines — that is 107 million people (p. 25). That number surely has grown by now. So why do we search? Battelle puts it simply, “In short, we search to find” (p.31). He elaborates, “At the end of the day, the holy grail of all search engines is to decipher your true intent — what you are looking for, and in what context” (p. 23).

While Battelle gives a great overview of the technical side of how search works and Google’s pretty amazing rise to (search) power, what I found most interesting was what Battelle describes as the “Database of Intentions.” He writes, “The Database of Intentions is simply this: the aggregate results of every search ever entered, every result list ever tendered, and every path taken as a result. … Taken together this information represents a real-time history of post-Web culture — a massive clickstream database of desires, needs, wants and preferences that can be discovered, subpoenaed, archived, tracked and exploited for all sorts of ends” (p. 6).

Maybe, I am just naïve, but I search without even thinking about how that data are being collected and used. I understand why consumers’ search data is so valuable to companies. Not only does it allow companies to target ads at specific Internet users, but, as an aggregate, it can tell you so much about us as society. Just spend some time using Google zeitgeist, and you’ll see. It is the equivalent of a worldwide focus group. Some people may view this as an invasion of privacy, but I welcome it. Not only am I willing to give up a little Internet privacy, for all the benefits and convenience that come along with it, but I also think a lot of the information can be used for good.

We clearly have come a long way from the library card catalog method of search — but what will the future of search look like? Danny Hillis, a computer scientist and MacArthur Foundation genius, argues that the future of search will be more about understanding rather than just finding (p.16). I couldn’t agree more. I think as we become more dependent on search, we are also becoming more demanding of search. We don’t want to have to scroll through multiple search results pages to find we what we are looking for. We just want Google to know. Battelle writes, “When it comes to search, as with the Internet itself, the most interesting stuff is yet to come. As every engineer in the search field loves to tell you, search is at best 5 percent solved — we’re not even into the double digits of its potential” (p. 252). He adds, “In short, the search of the future isn’t really a search engine as we know it. It’s more like an intelligent agent — or as Larry Page told me, a reference librarian with a complete mastery of the entire corpus of human knowledge” (p.252). Search has become a useful and integral part of my daily, and I, for one, am excited to see how it continues to evolve. Battelle puts it best, “Search is not longer a stand-alone application, a useful but impersonal tool for finding something on a new medium called the World Wide Web. Increasingly, search is our mechanism for how we understand ourselves, our world, and our place within it. It’s how we navigate the one infinite resource that drives human culture: knowledge” (p. 280).

Zeitgeist:  the spirit of the time; general trend of thought or feeling characteristic of a particular period of time.

While I was waiting for this weeks screencast to post, I checked out Monte’s link to Google Zeitgeist. I have always said I really like Google and am constantly amazed at its “intelligence,” but I think “like” just transitioned into utter amazement.  Basically, Google aggregates the of millions of searches received every day and provides the public with several tools to gain insight into global, regional, past and present trends. Its incredible how quickly you can examine these trends on just about everything. Google offers a glimpse (probably more than a glimpse) into our society and cultures abroad.

I wish I could have thought of something more profound to experiment with, but the OSCARS were on this past weekend (I’m film obsessed) so of course I searched winners, directors, filmmakers…etc. and was quite shocked at my findings.  For example, searching “Academy Awards” reveal predictable patterns (i.e. searchers increase right before the show airs), but there was hardly any searching in Europe.  Many filmmakers/academy members come from Europe and producers heavily campaign over there (especially during award season).  Also, Hollywood “celebrities” are searched far more globally when compared with the US.  However, US populations search entertainment websites much more than in other countries.  

I’m also thinking about doing a paper on the shifting public rhetoric surrounding LGBT civil rights.  The Google Trends Lab will be a great resource.  A quick search revealed public interest in “gay marriage rights” has dropped from 90 to 15 since 2004.  However, searching the film MILK (staring Sean Penn, also the winner for Best Actor), which focuses on Gay rights and the life of Harvey Milk, dramatically skews the findings about LGBT issues in the other direction.  

Anyways, I’ll stop my rambling about movies and let you give it a try.  I’m excited to see what John Battelle has to say about in his book The Search and what our class discussions will cover.

Word count: 771 | Estimated time to read entry: 6 min

It’s been a while since I last updated my blog. Frankly speaking, I am busy and typing out a long chunk of text doesn’t appeal to me anymore especially when I have foreign movies, Sci-fi novels and PSP games as alternatives. And when bloggers run out of ideas and time, the easiest thing to do is a compilation – like “Top 10 things for….” or “Best 5 tips for…” et alia.

Fortunately, I stumbled upon Google Zeitgeist, a site that lists the most popular search strings on a yearly basis across various categories. Here are some of the most interesting ones from India:

1. Katrina Kaif: Thanks to Akshay Kumar’s histrionics and a lot of jobless guys glued to the computer, in office and at home, Kat has made it to most of the categories on GZ, India. As of today, she is ranked #3 in ‘Fastest Rising’ where the only other human being, let alone a Bollywood celeb, is Genelia D’Souza at #7; she is ranked #10 in ‘Most Popular’ in which there is no other human being; #6 on ‘Mobile Search’ in which there is one another human being who I am reserving for a more elaborate discussion in 2 below and #1 on Bollywood celebs beating Aishwarya Rai. She is surprisingly not present in the ‘Holiday destination’ and ‘How to’ categories. Or perhaps GZ doesn’t want to list queries like ‘Katrina Kaif’s home address’ as a holiday destination and ‘How to get Katrina Kaif’s phone number’ as a ‘How to…’ query ??

2. Namitha: Now, this won’t come as a surprise to any of my regular blog readers because of my previous entries and my observations. Namitha figures #9 on ‘Mobile Search’. No wonder Google enabled the ‘widescreen’ option in the G1 Android phone! Now, don’t ask me why they enabled a touch screen too

3. Kareena Kapoor: Now, I had to list her being a great fan of hers! She is #5 in ‘Bollywood Celebs’ and she’s got 1-up on Shahid Kapur even here (he is on #6). If wearing a skimpy bikini in Tashan could get a rank #5, c’mon Bebo, you know what it takes to get to the top! Of course, I meant choosing better movies than the likes of Tashan, what did you guys think? And if that is what you thought, then what advice can you give Mallika Sherawat who is on #9, despite everything, in the very same list!??? See, logical extrapolation doesn’t work always.

4. Google: There were some bozos who actually googled the word ‘Google’ so much that it made it to #4 on ‘Most popular’ and #10 on ‘Mobile Search’ category. It is like asking the station master which station one is in, 1 second after colliding head-on with the yellow board that spells out the location details in 3 languages at every railway station. I guess Google should put a ‘You are here’ board on their homepage. But I am still wondering, what kind of a guy would google Google? Perhaps those with full cabins in offices, is my best guess

5. How to…: I think this whole category is quite hilarious so I will mention many things that caught my interest.

How to reduce/gain weight @ #1 and #6 respectively: Boy, am I relieved I am with the majority for once!  

How to get pregnant @ #4: Well, all I can tell you gals is to try not to experiment with iPill. Hey, the iPill is not an Apple product so please don’t swallow your iPod to see if your search query is miraculously answered. And ladies, for heaven’s sake, the ‘good old-fashioned method’ still works best!

How to earn money/impress a gal @ #3 and #9 respectively: My guess is that those who first searched on impressing a gal then trebled their search attempts by typing how to earn money. The wise guys realized that to impress a gal, you need to earn good money! Let me simplify your task guys – try googling ‘How to earn enough money to impress a gal’. But then Larry Page and Sergey Brin, founders of Google and two of the richest guys in the world are still trying their luck at getting that answer right so I wonder if you will have any luck

PS: Any reader who comments on why I chose to post an entry on this topic will get a brand new iPod….. Hey, wait a minute! Where did it go now?!!! Yikes!!!!!Looks like my neighbor’s daughter just swallowed it! 

I attended Google’s Zeitgeist conference again last fall, which is my second favorite conference after TED. And there was one session that blew me, and all of us in the audience, away as no other did.

Al Gore later said on stage: “I learned more about leadership in that half hour than in my entire career”.

Michael Pollan and I were raving about it, and I pointed out that the speaker did not even mention the word leadership the entire time. “It would have ruined it,” said Michael.

Who was that speaker? An Israeli conductor named Itay Talgam.

Notice that he encountered some audiovisual difficulties early on in the presentation. It did not matter. He never told us, he just showed us. Watch:

All of us know what sex is. Is there anybody out there who doesn’t know what sex is? So, Steve Martin movies are humorous and Hindi movies are “banal”: no not always, but there’s repressed carnality, now, overt and vulgar, both, Hollywood and Bollywood.

LET ME NOW ATTEMPT TO DEFINE WHAT SEX IS:

Merriam-Webster defines sex as “the sum of the structural, functional and behavioural characteristics of organisms that are involved in reproduction marked by the union of gametes that distinguish males and females.”

Google Zeitgeist (actually, Google Zeitgeist blushes in admitting it) and many articles often refer to “sex” as the most googled term. So why is sex so popular?

The most obvious answer is “the basic instinct”. Since men were cavemen, and women were well, “cavewomen”, sex has been the most basic urge.

Apart from say, certain alternative science fiction scenarios, or the Governor of California getting pregnant in a movie, there have been no unfortunate instances in which men had breasts and women acquired testicles.

So what drives an increasing online population to find sex? Why is the world driven by sex magic?

The Masters and Johnson sex studies were dry and clinical, but sold a lot of copies around the world, because of the subject matter. Now click on the Time link, click it, click it please, I know you want to do it!

If most people didn’t know by common sense that sex sells, and advertising did not constantly sell sexual stimuli, Mark Levit, managing partner of Partners & Levit Advertising says, yes, but only when used in “good taste”. According to him, as marketeers we must think not only in getting customer’s attention, but also in building a good reputation that will yield long-term results.

But why then is pornography one of the most googled terms and Internet Pornography Statistics say that the pornography industry has revenues larger than the top ten technology companies combined.

Well people may go to church, mosques and temples, but it seems that most of them are closet perverts. Well the answer, if God permits, I don’t know if there is a God(blasphemous statements again), is probably in our genitalia. Salvation Jane or Horny Joshi, all the world seems to revel in the fuzzy undersides.

I’ll end this blog by putting up a list& links of the ten most beautiful women in my opinion, so guys enjoy,
And one of my favourite songs, “Mambo Italiano”. Actually I’ll put three up, including Peter Gabriel’s “Steam”.

Yah, and for my fellow Indians, all the people who were obsessed with “you-know-what”, and the white (Sorry, Black, White, Cuban & Asian) people reading my blog, here’s an American’s view on where to find the sexiest girls in the world outside the U.S.

Warning: This is not an encouragement to pornography, if you thought so, that is just an exhaustive list.

Here’s an askmen.com survey, No: 46 Britney Spears, follow that link, keep clicking for more.

Finally, to end, and as an ode to rabid feminists, Voila!, I present Gisele Bundchen. Ciao for now!

The Google Zeitgeist 2008 is out and provides glimpses from Google searches around the globe. Here is a look at 2008 through the collective eyes of the Indian users on the web. The Zeitgeist offers a unique perspective on the year’s major events and hottest trends based on searches conducted by users in India. While developing the 2008 report, Google looked at various aspects of these searches to understand what was on Internet users minds. We retrieved the most frequently-searched terms for the period across many categories like Bollywood Celebrities, Holiday destinations etc. In addition we also looked at the top 10 fastest rising search words in India. This was done by reviewing several thousands of 2008’s most popular searches and ranking them based on how much their popularity increased compared to 2007.

Fastest Rising
1. youtube
2. orkut
3. katrina kaif
4. cricket
5. irctc
6. facebook
7. genelia d’souza
8. beijing 2008 olympic games
9. sixth pay commission
10. ipl

Most Popular
1. orkut
2. gmail
3. yahoo
4. google
5. youtube
6. yahoomail
7. indian railways
8. rediff
9. cricket
10. katrina kaif

Top searches on Mobile
1. orkut
2. yahoo
3. waptrick
4. gmail
5. games
6. katrina kaif
7. rediffmail
8. yahoomail
9. namitha
10. google

Top Bollywood Celebrities
1. katrina kaif
2. aishwarya rai
3. salman khan
4. hrithik roshan
5. kareena kapoor
6. shahid kapur
7. deepika padukone
8. shahrukh khan
9. mallika sherawat
10. genelia d’souza

Top holiday destinations
1. goa
2. kerala
3. kashmir
4. dubai
5. singapore
6. australia
7. london
8. shimla
9. switzerland
10. manali

Top ‘how to’ searches
1. how to reduce weight
2. how to kiss
3. how to earn money
4. how to get pregnant
5. how to learn english
6. how to gain weight
7. how to play guitar
8. how to create a website
9. how to impress a girl
10. how to tie a tie
Reference: Google Zeitgeist 2008

Google Zeitgeist publishes the most popular Google searches for the day and for the year.

For 2008, the fastest-rising searches are:

1. Obama
2. Facebook
3. ATT
4. iPhone
5. Youtube

I went back to my history section of Firefox, and found my last week of Google searches to be a bit more… offbeat.  Here is a list of six of them-

1. “Picasa can’t see bitmap” I was cleaning up my hard drive and consolidating my photos. I love Picasa, but couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t showing some old photos I’d moved into “My Pictures.” Google told me I needed to turn on .bmp viewing in options.
2. “keeping cat out of Christmas tree” Not my cat, luckily. A Facebook photo comment session led to curiosity on my part. I read that bitter apple spray, tinfoil, or vinegar have been used. With varying amounts of success.
3. “biblical theology” Prepping for our new small group. We are going to do a book club with God’s Big Picture, by Vaughan Roberts. Wanted some background for the church website announcement. Wikipedia won for the link.
4. “dell blinking orange power” The electricity went out. The electricity came on. Our desktop computer did not. Google led me to a list of people who had struggled with the problem, and correctly diagnosed a blown power supply.
5. “how to open a pomegranate” We have a new food interest. Found a video on how to segment a pomegranate, and even remove the seeds in a bowl of water.
6. “god tape k-earth” The Google failure of the week. While getting my hair cut yesterday, I heard this enormously cheezy clip on the radio. Apparently God had dropped this tape off at the radio station, so they played it every year. We were supposed to be comforted by “God’s” logic that, even though there was horrible pain and suffering in the world, there is good too. So be happy. Or something. I wanted to write a whole blog post on that one, but I couldn’t find the transcript online.

So I still know nothing about iPhones or Sarah Palin. But I sure am smarter about lots of other things…

Zeitgeist es la forma en que Google denomina a su lista anual de las búsquedas online más populares a lo largo del año.

Dada la presencia global del buscador, y su posición dominante en un número mayoritario de mercados mundiales, Zeitgeist se ha convertido con los años en un clásico para entender mejor qué nos motiva en la red, qué le pedimos a la misma, y cómo nos comportamos al navegar.

Asimismo, es de gran interés el estudio comparativo de las similitudes y diferencias nacionales y lingüísticas en cuanto a lo más búscado.

Como ejemplos, resumimos aquí la lista de los más rápidos crecimiento en búsquedas (“fastest rising”) de 2008 a nivel global y español, recién publicados:

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

1. fama
2. tuenti
3. cintube
4. facebook
5. hi5
6. fotolog
7. myspace
8. youtube
9. badoo
10. loquo

Como detalle de especial relevancia, desde Retelur nos gustaría destacar que hasta en el caso de las comunidades sociales en las que el usuario pasa horas a diario, una gran parte de los accesos se realiza previo paso por el cajetín del buscador.
Sin duda, un patrón de navegación destacable, y con muy profundas implicaciones. Una conclusión más de la riqueza de datos que se pueden encontrar buceando en ésta lista cada año.

 Qualche giorno fa Google Zeitgeist (si legge zàitgaist) ha reso note le parole più ricercate nel 2008 su Google, famoso motore di ricerca.

Tra queste, in Italia, troviamo le olimpiadi di Pechino che capeggiano al primo posto, seguiti dal famosissimo network ke sta spopolando in Italia a ritmo incalzante: Facebook.
Al terzo posto si posiziona Obama, segno di interesse verso una politica che non appartiene al nostro paese. 
Tra le ricerche, curioso e allo stesso importante, vi è il nome di Saviano che compare al settimo posto e al nono i Mutui, a dimostrazione che il nostro paese si informa sull’attualità e dei mutamenti che lo coinvolgono.Le parole sono state poi suddivise in vari gruppi in base alle categorie come concerti (due italiani capeggiano ai primi posti), programmi televisivi, ricette e finanziamenti.

Qui sotto vi copio i risultati che troverete visitando il sito di Google Zeitgeist 2008, inerenti all’Italia.

 Ricerche in ascesa 

Vi ci ritrovate con questi dati? Queste liste rispecchiano le vostre ricerche?

Per ricerche più specifiche vi consiglio di utilizzare Google Insights, dove potrete trovare i dati relativi alla vostra città o ad altre zone, in un determinato periodo e per una precisa categoria.

Essendo di Parma ho fatto questa ricerca:

Zona: Italia> Parma
Periodo: ultimi 12 mesi
Categorie: tutte 

E queste solo le parole più ricercate su Google a Parma:

1. Parma
2. Meteo
3. Pagine bianche
4. Repubblica
5. Libero
6. Gazzetta
7. Corriere
8. Trenitalia
9. Yahoo
10. Tgcom

In più tra le ricerche in ascesa, capeggia Facebook e, su Parma, questro è il suo andamento:

 Puff! Un esplosione di Facebook maniaci a partire da Agosto, forse perchè la versione in italiano è nettamente migliorata?

        

 

 

 

 

 

 

Google gives a fascinating glimpse into what the nation is thinking and the Google Zeitgeist service is an absorbing read. In particular we were gripped by the details of the fastest rising recipes on Google.co.uk in 2008:

Nella solita annuale classifica di Google – la teutonica Zeitgeist – le parole più ricercate e cliccate sono semplicemente quelle che si sono più sentite durante l’anno praticamente in ogni parte del mondo sia dagli organi d’informazione sia parlando tra di noi. A livello globale i più ricercati sono stati – e come non potevano non esserlo – Sarah Palin, Pechino 2008, Facebook e Obama. Se poi guardiamo la nostra classifica quello che colpisce immediatamente è che noi italiani siamo più pragmatici, più incisivi nelle cose che fanno “vita quotidiana”. Ed ecco spuntare ai primi posti – oltre ai soliti Facebook, Obama e Pechino 2008 – quello che noi italiani sappiamo fare meglio, ossia il Pane, la Pizza e pagare il Mutuo quando non ci pignorano la casa. Siamo strani noi popolo italico o sono discutibili le nostre ricerche? Potremmo dire sia l’uno che l’altro.

Google Zeitgeist come ogni anno ha pubblicato la speciale classifica dei termini più ricercati nei trenta Paesi del mondo più influenti (vi sembrerà strano, ma ci siamo pure noi). A livello mondiale la classifica è così composta:

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

Mentre in quella italiana compaiono ai primi posti Saviano, Facebook, le immancabili Olimpiadi di Pechino, Obama e addirittura un posto da primato spetta alla Fiat Cinquecento. Questa la classifica in tutto il suo splendore:

1. pechino 2008
2. facebook
3. obama
4. ecopass
5. la talpa
6. finanziaria 2008
7. saviano
8. wiki
9. mutui
10. cinquecento

La ricerca si differenzia sostanzialmente in fasce di appartenenza, ci sono quelle più popolari dove YouTube è al comando, ma è ai posti subito dietro che si vedono le prime novità: con Lavoro, Casa, Istruzione, Elezioni e Dieta si capisce quanta aria di tradizionalismo abbiamo in Italia, mentre “iPhone” e “Uomini e donne” fuoriescono dalla loro fascia d’appartenenza portandosi in quella dei più popolari. Google Italia ha stilato ben sei classifiche differenti, oltre alle due già citate, si sono presi la briga di esporci le migliori ricerche per Concerto, Incentivi, Ricette e Programmi televisivi.
Se tra i “Concerti” la classifica è praticamente identica da dieci anni (Vasco e Liga in testa con due sole new entry, Tokyo Hotel e Negramaro, nei primi dieci), la stessa cosa vale sostanzialmente per le “Ricette” con il Pane, la Pizza e le Crostate ai gradini più alti, mentre si nota una leggera tendenza all’esotico al decimo posto: il Couss Couss. Alla voce “Programmi televisivi” si capisce cosa vedono gli italiani e perché programmi criticati da tutti (lo vedi “Amici”? – io? ma che dici!) siano in realtà in testa alla classifica: Forum, Amici, Uomini e donne, Grande Fratello, La Talpa, L’Isola dei famosi e X Factor. Indovinate che posto occupano? I primi sei corrispondono esattamente alla classifica, poi c’è il salto di una posizione coperta da Report (prima trasmissione “seria”), mentre al nono e al decimo posto troviamo rispettivamente Le Iene e Zelig. O siamo una popolazione di stupidi oppure lo facciamo per sdrammatizzare la situazione in cui ci troviamo. In realtà ci sarebbe anche una terza possibilità: quella che la gente guarda i programmi “seri” senza aver bisogno di cercarla in Rete, ma qui andiamo sul Progressive, mentre noi preferiamo il Rock.

Altro punto altra situazione. Una nuova fascia classificabile è quella degli “Incentivi”. Incentivi a cosa?, diremo noi. Ma un po per tutto: dalla Rottamazione in quanto tale all’incentivo per il Cambio della vecchia Tv alla Rottamazione del frigo, passando – tra i tanti incentivi proposti quest’anno come lo scorso – per il Gpl, il Metano, ma anche per il Fotovoltaico e i Pannelli solari, finendo con un fantomatico Conto energia, un generalissimo Incentivo esodo – che non si sa effettivamente che voglia dire – e addirittura per un qualcosa che ultimamente ha fatto parlare di se a corrente alternata: il Digitale terrestre (mica vi sarete scordati della vicendona Sky?). Non dimenticando l’ormai tristemente famoso Ecopass che si trova nella classifica dei più popolari.
Questa la situazione italiana, o più semplicemente il “disastro all’italiana”, chiamatelo come volete ma sempre uguale resta.

Cerchiamo adesso di analizzare meglio questa classifica e se riusciamo a capirci qualcosina.

Tutti facciamo ricerche col principe dei motori, ed è tutto sommato giusto che Sua Altezza ci faccia un resoconto delle nostre ricerche, saranno attendibili? saranno manipolate? e chi se ne frega! Avere delle classifiche, dei sondaggi o delle televendite con o senza il televoto è ormai un fatto di costume, è diventato un luogo comune meglio e più sviscerato di “si stava meglio quando si stava peggio“. A parte il fatto che questo detto è una sciocchezza planetaria – e sfido chiunque a dimostrarlo -, oggi conviviamo con sondaggi e ricerche un po ovunque. Da qualsiasi parte ci giriamo vediamo sondaggi: in Tv sui giornali e per radio, per non parlare dei migliaia di libri che snocciolano sondaggi e ricerche su ogni dove. Quindi una classifica delle parole più ricercate nel principale motore di ricerca al mondo ci sta come il cacio sui maccheroni, ed è tutto un gran dire chiaramente.
Come siamo allora noi italiani? cosa cerchiamo principalmente? Beh, la cosa che arriva subito è il classicismo e il qualunquismo. Casa, salute, mutui sono dei classici pensandoci bene: chi di noi non pensa tutti i giorni alla casa (di calce e mattoni, non quella formata dalla famiglia), alla salute (perché senza non si va avanti) o al mutuo (chi lo ha e chi riesce a pagarlo soprattutto). Nel qualunquismo io metterei senza pensarci due volte il Grande fratello, Amici e La talpa. Ma pensandoci tre volte potrei anche sperare che sia in effetti un modo come un altro per non pensare alle grane della vita. Mi sa che sto pensando troppo, avete ragione.

Però tra le parole più ricercate emergono i lati oscuri di tutti noi: Saviano, la Finanziaria 2008 e la mitica Fiat 500 (quella nuova… purtroppo). Ancora una volta vengo sopraffatto dalla paura come tutti gli italiani: Saviano è ai primi posti, la Finanziaria pure e la cinquecento è al decimo posto tra i popolari. Gli internauti dello stivale sono rimasti ancora i malinconici “italiani brava gente” del film di De Santis del ‘65, oppure sono effettivamente cambiati col passare degli anni? Sembrerebbe di sì visti i tempi, ma leggendo le nostre chiavi tutto sembra dire l’opposto. Comunque, dalle segnalazioni si nota come il popolo italiano sia amante dell’intrattenimento ma allo stesso tempo ciondola tra i vecchi e nuovi problemi di sempre, con un occhio di riguardo all’informazione (sia in video che in testo), alla cultura e tutto ciò che fa “sociale” in ogni contesto e in ogni sua retorica.
Ma questo ci vede frivoli agli occhi degli altri? Non lo so, o perlomeno, spero di no, ma è anche vero che non siamo messi così male come Paese civilizzato amante della Tv e della PlayStation. Un esempio molto calzante è raffigurato dai francesi: nella top ten dei più popolari si trovano i giochi, la Tv, il meteo e eBay. Meglio si trova Google.de con ai primi posti eBay, il meteo, YouTube, il Bild e telefonbuch che tradotto (da gtranslate naturalmente) significa “Rubrica”, anzi, se c’è qualche tedesco di passaggio che mi dicesse quale sia in realtà la portata di questa parola, mi fa un’enorme cortesia. In Spagna la fanno da padrone le serie televisive: Heroes, Prison break, Lost, Dottor House, Dexter e Grey’s Anatomy le ricerche più succulente.

Vedete, la maggior parte della gente che fa ricerche su Google, è quella che cerca qualcosa di specifico, dove non sa dove trovarle senza un filtro che regola le ricerche dimezzando il tempo della ricerca stessa. Quindi non siamo particolarmente strani noi italiani, solamente non sappiamo bene dove cercare. In effetti è anche reale come classifica, basta vedere l’ultima classifica dell’Ocse dove ci piazzano al 24esimo posto come penetrazione delle connessioni Internet su trenta paesi rilevati. E questa è un’altra classifica, ma più seria e più ragionata, meglio studiata diremmo pure.

Ingin tahu apa yang sering dicari di Internet? Jika hanya ingin mengetahui perbandingan kata-kata yang sering dicari melalui google, kita bisa menggunakan Google Trends, Ingin mengetahui 10 kata kunci yang sering dicari di setiap negara, bisa digunakan Google Zeitgeist. Tetapi saat ini Google Zeitgeist tidak menyertakan negara Indonesia.

Sedangkan dengan Goolge Trends, kita hanya bisa melihat hasilnya dengan memasukkan kata kunci terlebih dahulu. Bagaimana jika kita ingin mencari kata-kata kunci yang sering dicari melalui google ? Mengingat google merupakan mesin pencari terbesar di dunia.Pernahkah terpikir untuk mencari hal-hal berikut ?

Mobil apa yang paling banyak di cari di negara A ?
Apakah yang paling banyak dicari di Indonesia ?
Di Kota C apa saja yang paling banyak dicari pengguna Internet?
Bagaimana perbandingan pencarian kata X di negara A,B dan C ?

Saat ini kita bisa mengetahui hal-hal tersebut berdasarkan informasi dari google, dengan fasilitas terbarunya. Fasilitas baru Google adalah Google Insights for search. Dengan Fitur ini, kita bisa mengetahui kata atau pencarian apa saja yang populer dengan berbagai opsi, seperti Negara mana, kota/propinsi mana, untuk kategori tertentu saja dan lainnya.

Selain mengetahui kata-kata kunci (keyword) yang sering dicari di sebuah kota atau negara tertentu, dengan Google Insight kita juga bisa membandingkan pencariannya untuk beberapa negara atau kota. Hasilnya akan disajikan dalam bentuk grafik maupun map/peta dengan tampilan yang cukup manarik.

bandingkan dengan Google Trends dan Google Zeitgeist, maka fitur ini lebih menarik. Untuk mengetahui seberapa perbandingan prosentase yang tampil (agar angka muncul di grafik), maka harus login dulu ke account google. Tetapi nilai yang tampil tidak menunjukkan berapa kali banyaknya pencarian, tetapi merupakan perbandingan pencarian dalam persen.

Sumber: http://ebsoft.web.id/2008/08/14/mengetahui-yang-sering-dicari-di-internet-melalui-google/