Like so many of the ideas that tumble out of the Googleplex into the public domain, Google Trends is irresistible. SYS-CON group publisher and editorial director Jeremy Geelan puts the application, newly taken out of beta and now available to all cyberspace from the Google main page, through its paces by taking it out for a giddy spin around the i-Technology world. The results are surprising...

"See what the world is searching for" says the slogan accompanying http://www.google.com/trends - and that very precisely encapsulates the aspect of Google Trends that makes it addictive. Like Technorati on speed.

There really isn't any limit to the number of searches one can do while still assuring oneself that it is diligent journalistic research. Take the usual run-of-the-mill stuff, for example, like comparing "Java" and ".NET":

java .net

But the real apples-to-apples comparison, obviously, is not this one but "J2EE" and ".NET":

j2ee .net




And even this smacks way too much of mock-empiricism, almost as bad as those articles on slow news days which use Monster.com stats as a way of suggesting which technology is "ahead" out there in the i-technology marketplace.

No, what is needed is an altogether more personal approach. This is where Google Trends is dynamite. Take for example "McNealy" and "Jonathan Schwartz:

"mcnealy" "jonathan schwartz"



Not in itself especially revealing until you drill down into the datapoints below, which is a breakdown by cities:

In other words, while Sun's new CEO may be the talk of all of Wall Street, Sun's outgoing CEO (and still its Chairman) still remains a major focus of folks in the Valley.

Turning from i-technology people to i-technology phenomena, Steve Rubel - the writer on social software and how it's transforming marketing, media, and public relations - has already drawn attention to this comparison, a true gem:

blogs websites

Again, the breakdown by Cities reveals some surprising data, such as that blogs aren't yet dominant in Delhi, but they're sizzling in Sao Paolo, Brazil!

Next I couldn't resist taking a peek at whether "Web services" was waning as a search term, perhaps in favor of "SOA." As I suspected, while  "Web services" is alive and well and being searched on worldwide, "SOA" is rising as steadily as it falls from primacy as the key concept driving integration.

"web services" soa




Last let's turn to AJAX. Here, Google Trends - for my money - comes into its own as a viable new tool.

Look how instantly, for example, it pinpoints the birth of the term "Web 2.0" - October 2004. Tim O'Reilly probably ought to use Google Trends on a daily basis, to see how it's faring against AJAX: it doesn't look good!

ajax "web 2.0"



Let us know what you're using Google Trends for by sending a mail to [email protected]. Maybe we should have a weekly competition to see who devises the best search, with readers voting on the Google Trend of the Week from among the best five submitted each week (according to our editors). Anyone care to start the ball rolling?

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