Is there anywhere you can enter a keyword and get a map that shows - geographically - where people are located who use or search on that term?
Seems like it would be a great way to track trends, fads and interests - given that websites and search engines often know your location. Is it more complicated than it sounds?
There must be. Try asking someone at languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu. Contributors there do a lot of statistical language research.
Google Insights for Search lets you enter a keyword and see its popularity across countries.
For example, the Straight Dope is popular in the US, Canada, Australia and UK. The Straight Dope Message Board, however, seems to be a primarily American phenomenon. And Sri Lanka is apparently the sex search capital of the world.
Interesting, but what about breaking out just (North) America?
You can’t do it by continent, but you can select USA and have it broken down by top 10 states. For example, Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi are more interested in the Bible than California and Washington. And Dallas is the #1 city for Bible searches – in the world.
Neat! I wonder why Wisconsin and Pennsylvania would be more interested in big bands than anyone anywhere else.
Great question. Why were you looking up big bands?
I’m a hopeless music nerd.
Here’s (pdf) a terrific academic article by Harvard econ doctoral student Seth Stephens-Davidowitz which uses Google Insight data for searches using a particular racial epithet and compares it to voting in 2004 and 2008, within “media markets” of the US (see page 43). The author contends that Google Insight offers a tool especially relevant to subjects which people tend to not be entirely truthful about (e.g., racial prejudice, or sex, or “embarrassing medical conditions”) in traditional surveys.