Isn't that interesting? I knew you would.
- Tom Lehrer
- Tom Lehrer
If you download the Google toolbar for your web browser and type a couple of letters into the search box, it comes up with "a list of useful suggestions based on popular Google searches". In other words, it gives the ten most popular search terms that start with the letters you've chosen. (At least, I think that's what's going on. If it isn't then you can probably ignore this article.) I tried A, and found that Amazon is, in a sense, the most popular thing on the internet beginning with that letter. Then I made 25 similar discoveries, which I'll list now to save you the bother.
A is for Amazon
B is for BBC
C is for currency converter
D is for dictionary
E is for eBay
F is for Firefox
G is for Gmail
H is for Hotmail
I is for Ikea
J is for jokes
K is for Kelly Blue Book
L is for lyrics
M is for Mapquest
N is for news
O is for Orbitz
P is for Paris Hilton
Q is for quotes
R is for Ryanair
S is for Spybot
T is for Target
U is for UPS
V is for Valentines Day
W is for weather
X is for Xbox
Y is for Yahoo
Z is for zip codes
Only five of them are directly to do with the internet or computers, unless you count Amazon and eBay, which are internet-only ways of getting general things. Three are big American companies that I hadn't heard of. If you're picking a brand name, you should maybe bear in mind that competition is stronger on some letters than others. iPods are unlucky to have landed a letter that also begins Ikea, the (US) Inland Revenue Service and the glorious Internet Movie Database. On the other hand, Yahoo has had a pretty easy ride. colonising eight of the ten top Y slots with Yahoo Games, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Maps and so on.
Maybe most interesting (you're as fascinated by all this as me, right?) are the eight words or phrases that aren't proper nouns. "Weather" and "jokes" have crept on despite not picking out any particular product or service, which I suppose helps paint a picture of what people think the internet is for. Apart from porn, obviously. Talking of which, I suspect Google may have made a decision not to confront Toolbar users with certain popular search terms. Though it must mean something that Paris Hilton has the supreme accolade of being the only human on the list, beating Oprah (the fifth O) and Harry Potter (the ninth H). Anyway, I think looking at only the ones without capital letters is fun because it starts to resemble a peculiar version of those children's books. I know, I know, you want to see what that does to the list. Well, I couldn't work out how to see more than the top ten for each letter (can anyone else?), so this is incomplete, but anyway:
A is for ---
B is for best buy
C is for currency converter
D is for dictionary
E is for exchange rates
F is for free games
G is for games
H is for horoscopes
I is for icons
J is for jokes
K is for ---
L is for lyrics
M is for maps
N is for news
O is for online dictionary
P is for prom dresses
Q is for quotes
R is for recipes
S is for song lyrics
T is for thesaurus
U is for used cars
V is for ---
W is for weather
X is for ---
Y is for ---
Z is for zodiac
Brings out the world's interest in astrology, games and lyrics, but still doesn't reveal (or explain) the odd fact that in second place for L is "lunar New Year 2005".
In other alphabet news, Kjell Sandved spent 26 years searching for butterflies with letters on their wings and taking pictures, so if you click here you can see your name spelt out in insect form. Just the thing for kooky homemade Christmas cards.
9 comments:
I find this stuff fascinating as well (unsurprisingly, given my job...). Don't know if you've come across this yet, but Google Trends is an interesting tool for looking at what people are searching for and when:
http://www.google.com/trends
If you're interested in seeing what the most popular sites are on the web, Alexa has a pretty good ranking - this one's for the UK:
http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?cc=GB&ts_mode=country&lang=none
Wikipedia's just sniffing around the top 10...
That's great. It looks as though I was wrong about Y and I: Yahoo is many times more popular than Ikea. How do you see overall ranks?
It reminds me of a talk I saw by the guy who runs MoodViews. The trick there is that bloggers on LiveJournal tag their entries with moods, so you can collect statistics for how "horny" everyone's feeling at a particular time, for example. I say everyone - it's mainly teenage girls who use that site...
Top sites globally you mean?
http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=global&lang=none
Lots of Chinese stuff in there, unsurprisingly.
I love the way that when lists of popular search items are published they always say "purient content omitted". I just love that.
You know what else is interesting - Google gives the top ten suggestions for any word / phrase you enter (over a certain threshold, that is... I imagine if you enter "kajhsljdhb" you won't get any suggestions whatsoever).
So, for instance - if you enter "tommy" - you get
1. tommy hilfiger
2. tommys
3. tommy bahama
4. tommy lee
5. tommysbookmarks
and then some other versions of tommys bookmarks. obviously, I was eager to find out what this tommys bookmarks site is all about and how come so many people are searching for it yet i've never heard of it. Well... turns out it's a porn bookmarks site, which kinda steps on the point joe was trying to make. guess Google didn't check for content on that one...
Anyway - what I wanted to show you was the home page of google suggest:
http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en
its exactly like the standard google homepage but with the added suggestion feature, AND the cool part is you also get the number of results per suggestion as you type. There's also a link to a discussion group there (though I didn't bother entering it so can't tell if it's worth anything).
Cheers xx
This looks apt. It's a website that measures word frequency. They also monitor the frequency of searches within their own frequency database (very postmodern, very fractal):
http://www.wordcount.org/querycount.php
Can you guess which word comes top?
I'm guessing sex.
Yep!
Nice website.
Please visit
www.googolalphabets.com
It's more original idea
At that page you can see letterlinks!
You can select letter to yourself. It will be a link to your site.
T.
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