Tuesday, 19 January, 2010 | 2:45 pm | 5 comments
Google Zeitgest 2009 Sucks! Really bad.
Yes, it really does and it should be a lesson for all marketerers that “The Google Zeitgeist fail” – To make a conclusion based on false or not enough data is not a good strategy.
Google Zeitgest 2009 sucks
Yes, do not believe Google says in the official Google Zeitgeist 2009. The reason is quite simple: More than a month ago, before the last month of 2009 has started Yahoo launched a Press Release of the most popular searches for 2009. Bing/MSN couldn’t be far behind so they released their data as well. The Spin Doctors at Google then thought this through for maybe 2 seconds before they released their own Google Zeitgeist 2009.
There is only one problem…
The data is not correct, 2009 wasn’t over at that time.
Some people will then say “Well, 11 months is good enough to release this”. When I look back at 2009 you can easily say that the answer is simple: NO! This because Google missed two of the most searched keywords during 2009…
Tiger Woods
One of the most interesting phenomenon of 2009 was the Tiger Woods scandal where it came to light that he constantly cheated on his Swedish wife, Elin Nordegren. This led some weeks of massive reporting regarding the scandal. It didn’t make things better that he also crashed his car after being chased by a raged Swedish girl.
But if you look at the list from Google News for the most searched keywords:
Google News – Fastest Rising (US)
- swine flu
- susan boyle
- jon and kate
- adam lambert
- rihanna (chris brown)
- new moon
- inauguration
- michael jackson
- nadya suleman
- missing link found
Wasn’t Tiger Woods a lot in the news in December? And why isn’t Tiger Woods in the section which they specifically call “Celebritiy Scandals”
Tiger Woods (and his mistresses) have been on top of Googles Hot Trends since the car accident 27th November and the scandal has risen to the most talked about scandal of 2009. In retrospect we will see this as a huge blow to Tiger Woods image and the largest celebrity scandal of 2009.
We love scandals and gossip and if we read it or hear it somewhere the first thing that we do is “Google it“. That’s how our brains work and it doesn’t matter how much we try to resist it, we are a searching people and we are curios to find information. If you also look at the most searched keywords on a daily basis you can see that his mistresses are there as well and the reason is quite simple: We want to search for the mistresses he’s been with to see which ones hotter than the other.
No matter how you look at it the Google Zeitgest is wrong, because from every search data I can find on the web Tiger Woods should be on the top of 2009.
Avatar
But it is not only Tiger Woods. Google Zeitgeist have not taken in the massive searches that will be done when Avatar opened wide in december. It’s was of the most hyped movies of 2009 with director James Cameron that revolutionized computer technology on screen.
It was talked about in social media, it was a trending topic on Twitter all the time and we heard stories of the amazing 3D technology. It has since the release been a huge success and as I write now it’s only a matter of days before the movie will break the record for All Time Grossers Worldwide, beating Titanic.
But let’s take a look what Google Zeitgest 2009 says about this:
Fastest Rising in Entertainment (Global)
- michael jackson
- transformers
- eminem
- naruto shippuden
- beyonce
- peliculas id
- paranormal activity
- anime online
- natasha richardson
- poker face lyrics
Transformers is there and also Paranormal Activity but not Avatar. You bet that we searched for Avatar. It doesn’t matter if it will flop or be a box office success – we will search.
Do not believe Google Zeitgest
As a conclusion, let’s look at how much people searched and the trend locally the US for Avatar & Tiger Woods during december:
Number of searches in December for the phrase “Tiger Woods”: 45,500,000
Number of searches in December for the phrase “Avatar”: 24,900,000
Google Zeitgeist has always been a good source for looking at trends for each year, but this year it sucks! Really bad. I hope that Google will fix this with correct data, but I’m afraid that it will be printed in the history books and there we will see no signs of two of the biggest phenomena in the World 2009.
But in Googles History Books they will not write about this, and it’s bad…
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