Google This: Terry* Trends
I’m totally stealing this from a post by Julianne at Cosmic Variance.
Through the magic of Google Trends, we now must face the brutal truth. No one cares. Or at least, the fraction of people who care is now half as many as four years ago.
That said, I wondered how some of Terry’s goals fared with the hordes of searching masses over at Google. Here’s “Science” and “Arts”:
As Julianne noted, there appears to be a lull in science interest around Christmas – but the same is true for the arts. Apparently, the holiday season bestows a sense of all-knowing, since humanity’s initial instinct is to go straight to Google with any question (or for that matter, Wikipedia). It is interesting to note that, for some inexplicable reason, science isn’t nearly as interesting in the summer months as in January, whereas the arts pulls through year-round.
What about Climate? Sustainability? Biodiversity?
Once again – Christmas cookies and days at the beach win over science. Interestingly, people don’t seem to care nearly as much about climate during the summer than the winter. However, the top four inquisitive cities are all in Australia (Perth, Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne). I would think, then, that the Aussies are more concerned about climate in their summer months than North Americans of Europeans are.
Lastly, a note on sustainability – Googley interest in said topic has remained fairly even over the past 3 years, except what appears to be a sudden increase of proportion not observed in previous years. Perhaps a sustainable “hockey stick effect” is in due course – more folks are jumping on the green bandwagon.
