http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070522/ap_on_hi_te/google_trends

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http://www.google.com/trends

just went online – see the first edition of the 100 hottest search trends

Cool! It's something a lot of people would like to see. And it IS very addictive as someone in the article said.

[Moved from "Google Hot Trends" – Tony]

Google have just released a new bit to "Trends" which gives you the top 100 searches for each day, updated several times daily
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Google Hot Trends: http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends
Official Google Blog: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/whats-hot-today.html
Googling Google: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/zdnet/Google/~3/118733929/
=========================================

What's interesting is seemingly really weird search phrases, all questions, such as: what artist’s bird illustrations fetched a printed book record $8.8 million at a 2000 auction (May 16) and what part of a graduate’s costume gave the cordon bleu cooking school its name (May 22). Click on their links in Google Hot Trends and you'll discover that they're all Yahoo! Answers questions – proving that some (looks like a lot) reject the Yahoo! Search box which is provided with each question and just use Google. And it's also really interesting the way a couple of questions get loads and loads of queries.

Check it out!

this is so cool. For me I've long wanted Google to go from search to discovery, and this Hot Trends feature gives me a bunch of terms I can search for before I even realize that I want to search for them.

Welcome back, philipp!!

Thanks Mak! (And a big thanks to Tony for all the many posts during the last 2 weeks!)

Of course it's filtered. And remember the most important trends aren't what people search the most for every day (CNN, Porn etc), it's the spikes in queries that show hotness

Check the 20 URLs, which should send you to google.com.

I actually liked the Zeitgeist name better, as trends really is just a "daily updated" Zeitgeist.
Plus, Zeitgeist sounds much geekier :)

It is amazing that you can go back in this calendar if you choose to change the date, back to April 1978, wow ? Did I miss something here, where was Google in 1978 ?

Thanks Ionut, I fixed the URLs!

> It is amazing that you can go back in this calendar if
> you choose to change the date, back to April 1978, wow ?

This is just a standard date picker widget, but Google only allows you to select the dates from May 15 to the present day... other days are ghosted

As Heebie Sudoku notes, the Hot Trends list includes some weird search phrases. They're so distinctive that I presume they were entered by only one person, or at most just a handful of people.

Is it possible that one person, searching for a phrase over and over, can get that phrase into the top 100? Anybody feel like trying it?

All of the following Hot Trends from May 25, 2007 (as of approximately 3 PM PDT), were derived from clues in that day's New York Times crossword:

20. cribbage jack

35. monkey with cheek pouches

39. world s second highest capital

43. ian falconer

45. hebrew for one who wrestles with god

57. shoe waitress

65. black velvet singer alannah

66. double daggers in printing

73. source of sulfuric acid

80. vienna state opera music director

87. 2003 al manager of the year

89. lapd auditorium

93. 2006 oscar winner for his first film

In other words, more than one-eighth of Google's Hot Trends resulted from a single puzzle!

The Hot Trends changed while I composed this post, pushing some NYT crossword clue phrases up, down, in, or out of the list. Some of the new phrases in the list look like crossword clues – perhaps from another major online puzzle. I think that the effect of crosswords and other games with clues explains the weird phrases that Heebie Sudoku (love that name, by the way) and I had noticed.

I hereby name this phenomenon the "Cluetrends Manifestation." ;-)

From the current Hot Trends list (5/25, approx. 3:40 PDT) – seven phrases derived from that day's Los Angeles Times daily crossword:

31. johnny belinda oscar winner

40. one little can will keep you running free

43. firedome and firesweep

51. country singer travis

73. get outta my dreams get into my car

83. bbc sitcom monsoon family

88. conductor klemperer

And I recall two additional LA Times clues in a prior Hot Trends list, which I believe were "monsoon family" (without "bbc sitcom") and "estes ticket mate".

So, for two crosswords, about 20% of the Hot Trends. And that's not all: I'll bet that some other Hot Trends such as "10. ancient hebrew mystic" and "11. capital of south australia" are puzzle clues too.

Please note that I'm referring to Google Hot Trends for the USA. I don't know whether Hot Trends is available for other countries/regions, and if so, whether those lists contain puzzle clues as well.

I think it's weird google is indexing the results of the /trends/ "hot search terms" and that they are now appearing in the SERPS on prominent locations.

for example: http://www.google.com/search?q=This+Is+My+Now+lyrics&

http://www.google.nl/search?hl=en&q=trends+site%3Awww.google.com%2Ftrends%2F&meta=

I've started a blog on what I've called "Clue Trends":

http://cluetrends.blogspot.com/

The issue of crossword clues in Google Hot Trends is arcane – so I might have to expand the scope. (One thing that makes Google Blogoscoped worth viewing every day is how it covers the entire Google universe ... and beyond.) In any case, I think that Hot Trends is worth careful consideration: what inspires the top rising searches; how Hot Trends is pertinent to SEO; etc.