http://www.ericka.cc Occasional thoughts about research & life as a Ph.D. candidate, by Ericka Menchen-Trevino Thu, 17 Jun 2010 18:47:30 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 http://www.ericka.cc/2008/05/google-searching-is-news/ http://www.ericka.cc/2008/05/google-searching-is-news/#comments Tue, 20 May 2008 14:47:20 +0000 Ericka http://blog.erickamenchen.net/?p=143 I just added Google’s “Hot Trends” box to my iGoogle page. I’ve been interested in this kind of information since I first saw the Google Zeitgeist come out a few years ago, and the series of Current TV clips called Google Current. I haven’t seen other search engines providing this kind of info, (please leave a comment if you have). It’s an interesting way to monitor the environment. Usually expected types of terms come up, things that are in the news (hard news and quite a bit of entertainment news), but often enough there is something slightly unexpected, or at least interesting to investigate since there’s always some reason behind the trend. Today I clicked on “amantadine” and the two top news stories were about the fact that amantadine was a top Google search after last night’s “House” episode aired on TV. This certainly promotes the “rich get richer,” but I can also see the appeal of reporting on trends.

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