« Publishing Spotted: Over-Promoted | Main | This Blog Is Better Than Shakespeare »

May15
How Google Trends Can Launch A Thousand Stories

TrendsQuick! What's the most popular thing on Google right now?

It literaly takes five seconds to figure that out. Just visit Google Trends, and you can see that the most popular topics are: fantasia on american idol and jill nicolin and mcdonalds free chicken. If you click on the individual links, Google supplies a series of blog posts and news articles that will help contextualize those surreal bits of web history.

This is crucial intelligence for most writers and journalists. You can blog about topics that everybody is thinking about, you can research what people were thinking about at a particular moment in time, and you can find boat-loads of new ideas for stories.

Bookninja just pointed us towards the L.A. Times, where the Web Scout blog turned that metric into a full-blown detective story--trying to figure out why a T.S. Eliot poem became the most popular search term for a few minutes in May. The writer sums it all up here, pointing at the mysterious new measure of popularity that can launch a thousand article:

"Whereas popularity lists on other sites, like YouTube, MySpace, or cnn.com—are occupied by site-specific stories or video clips that people have already looked at, Google’s most-searched is by definition a list of what people do not yet know enough about. And that gives rise to this strange new kind of popularity mystery, where even if somewhere, for some reason, something has caught on, it can be difficult to figure out why."


0 Comments/Trackbacks




submit a trackback

TrackBack URL for this entry:

post a comment

Name, Email Address, and URL are not required fields.





Comment Preview

« Publishing Spotted: Over-Promoted | Main | This Blog Is Better Than Shakespeare »

Advertise

Related Resources

recent comments

    sponsored ads



    topics

    subscribe


    Prefer Email?
    Subscribe below-

    Enter your Email:


    Powered by FeedBlitz What's this?

    Current News

    Support This Blog

    blogroll


    My site was nominated for Best Education Blog!

    business social media

    Use these fast growing business social media sites to promote your business, feature your products, spotlight your business leaders, create links, and drive traffic back to your company site, all for free!

    BIZZlogos - Add your logo - free link to your site
    BIZZphotos - Add photos of your products and people
    BIZZprofiles - Submit your profile and build your online visibility
    BIZZspotlight - Spotlight your business with free links
    BIZZvideos - Videos about businesses, products and business people.
    BIZZbites - "Digg" for Business - Submit your articles and posts

    Know More Media - Writing / Speaking

    know more media network

    View Network Map

    Network Feed List (OPML)

    Know More Media Network
    Feed


    we support unitus

    PRWeb

    Influencer



    ThePublishingSpot is a member of the Know More Media network of business related blogs.

    Here are some current headlines from some of our business publications:

    ProductivityGoal

    CallCenterScript

    AdHurl

    TheBizofKnowledge

    LandingTheDeal

    CustomersAreAlways

    HealthCareVox

    BrainBasedBusiness

    TheInsurancePolicy

    MarketingBlurb