In What’s on your Mind, Humanity? we propose that Wikipedia offer visualizations of how much people around the globe access each article over time. This would permit us to track worldwide interest in any topic matter through the sands of time, a rich source of research.
Google Trends has covered many points of this idea, but using search phrases rather than encyclopedia articles. It lets you look up any search phrase, see its popularity over time and what geographies are most into it.
The site is very interesting and we hope Google deepens the functionality further.
Some quick findings: The Colbert Report searches are bigger in Canada than in the USA. Digg is on the rise. Searching for Sex is especially popular in Islamic countries.
6/27/06 update: Note that Google Trends doesn’t obviate the need to have Wikipedia report on what people are looking up. Google can only report on search terms, which are often ambiguous. The search term “Madonna” is popular in Italy for completely different reasons than in the USA. Unlike Google’s search statistics, Wikipedia can tell the difference between the Madonnas of Michigan and Nazareth.
