In times gone by, social trends were fairly hard to determine. Finding out about them required expensive and complex instruments including surveys, focus groups and diaries. However nowadays it’s much easier. And free of charge. Courtesy of Google. Of course. Who else? In the USA, a massive 75% of the 10 billion internet searches each month, occur via google.com [1] That’s 750 billion Google searches; only in the USA; and only in a month. So it’s not a giant leap of faith to a conclusion that Google searches reflect society reasonably accurately. With this in mind, I’m fascinated by this 28 July Age item providing, in each of seven categories, Google Australia’s top ten fastest rising searches for 2009 so far. See what you think about the results. To me it confirms my theory that swine flu’s a scare mongering beat-up. But I can’t understand Australians’ pre-occupation with Susan Boyle (pictured) and Masterchef. And I find it incredible that the fastest rising website search is for the Australian Tax Office’s. One of the common criticisms of social inquiry is that it’s a waste of time because it’s all commonsense anyway. Well maybe. And perhaps too, the fastest rising Google search categories are of no practical use. But to me as a list-man, these lists are of curious interest. If nothing more. And they drive home to me that in this 2009 world, I’m a sheep man in cattle country. Ho hum.
No comments:
Post a Comment