Google Correlate

What Herman Cain and Jimmy Carter Have in Common

By Matt Stiles | Matt Stiles | Topics: Uncategorized

Apparently there’s a strong correlation between people who search for GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain and those querying for the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library.

Here, for example, is a map of Herman Cain web searches back to 2003, according to Google Correlate: 

Here’s a map of searches for “Jimmy Carter President Library”: 

Here’s the data on a scatter plot (the circle in the upper righthand corner is Georgia): 

Of course, both men (and the library) reside in Georgia and, until earlier this year, Cain hosted a local talk radio show in Atlanta. So that probably explains the volume of searches in the state. 

Explore Google Correlate, and let me know what you find. 

It’s Easy to Draw Your Own Google Correlations

By Matt Stiles | Matt Stiles | Topics: Uncategorized

I’m a big fan of Google Correlate, a service that lets you spot real-word trends through Internet users’ searches. For example, search traffic for the term “lose weight” spikes around New Year’s Day: 

A friend this morning told me about a new feature allowing anyone to draw random distributions on a line graph — and then see others’ correlated searches. You can also download the data from Google. 

In this graph, I drew a 45-degree decline (seen as a blue line). Google then charted search traffic (red line) for a specific term that’s similar over time. Here, you can see how people have gradually stopped searching for “flash movie” since 2004. 

Sorry, Adobe: 

Some searches have exploded, like “wordpress integration.” Good news for folks like Andrew Nacin.

This chart shows that QR codes have spiked recently. Perhaps there’s a correlation between that and the fact that someone at my office posted a QR code explainer in the elevator. 

Go draw something and send it to me. 

UPDATE: The first submission is from Kate Martin, whose chart correlates with “american spiders”. Not sure what to make of this trend: 

UPDATE 2: Love this one from Jed Sundwall: