http://sukshma.net/2006/11/21/trendy-india-defies-the-rest-of-the-world/ subtle threads between self, work & life. Mon, 14 May 2012 05:03:45 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ http://sukshma.net/2006/11/21/trendy-india-defies-the-rest-of-the-world/#comment-1894 Thu, 23 Nov 2006 15:16:13 +0000 http://sdawara.wordpress.com/2006/11/21/trendy-india-defies-the-rest-of-the-world/#comment-1894 Hi Prateek,
I believe Google Trends will only compare search term frequencies, so drawing any conclusions from the reports is at your own risk.
Also note that Google stems searches. So ‘newspapers’ might also result in a search for just ‘newspaper’, similarly ‘blogs’ are stemmed to just ‘blog’. Here is a trend report for ‘newspaper’ versus ‘newspapers’. Search frequency for ‘newspaper’ is always higher than ‘newspapers’ – possibly due to stemming. Nevertheless, notice that the two trend lines follow each other closely.
Then of course there are searches for synonyms, other variants and like you pointed out – why would a consumer search for ‘TV’. For the same reasons, why just search for ‘movies’? And yet, here is another trend report for ‘movies’, ‘films’, ‘cinema’. The report clearly shows the only safe conclusion is each trend line itself – don’t rely on the volumes.
Finally, here is another trend report comparing the search terms ‘TV’, ‘Television’, ‘ESPN’, and ‘Star’. The report clearly shows people do search for TV. Here too, there is more than what simply meets the eye. Could it be that Google treats a search for ‘Star TV’ and ‘TV’ as the same?
Again, draw conclusions at your own risk . Thank you for your observations and for stopping by!
- Santosh

]]> http://sukshma.net/2006/11/21/trendy-india-defies-the-rest-of-the-world/#comment-1892 Thu, 23 Nov 2006 03:14:17 +0000 http://sdawara.wordpress.com/2006/11/21/trendy-india-defies-the-rest-of-the-world/#comment-1892 [...] In India, movies have always been more popular than TV and blogs are more popular than newspapers with the online community. DesiPundit points to Santosh Dawara who uses Google Trends to demonstrate “how certain trends in India are in contrast with the rest of the world”. [...]

]]> http://sukshma.net/2006/11/21/trendy-india-defies-the-rest-of-the-world/#comment-1889 Wed, 22 Nov 2006 22:00:59 +0000 http://sdawara.wordpress.com/2006/11/21/trendy-india-defies-the-rest-of-the-world/#comment-1889 Interesting analysis but some dangerous assumptions. Note that I don’t agree or disagree with your conclusions, just pointing out some flaws
1) Who searches for ‘TV’ anyway? Wouldn’t you type in a channel or a show?
3) Try changing ‘newspapers’ to ‘newspaper’. The result is reversed. Wouldn’t most people type in the name of a newspaper?
6) Also need to consider different ways of spelling- e.g. ‘Shahrukh’, ‘Amir’ etc.
‘Amitabh’ is neck-and-neck with ‘Shahrukh’ in India, but that is not the case outside India.
10) ‘marriage’ and ‘wedding’ trump both of those
11) ‘stocks’ beat both shares and mutual funds
12) Kolkata and Pune still holding strong!
13) No real trend here except that the volume of searches jumps exponentially whenever there’s a controversy.
15) ‘tandoori’ is head and shoulders above everything else

]]> http://sukshma.net/2006/11/21/trendy-india-defies-the-rest-of-the-world/#comment-1886 Wed, 22 Nov 2006 16:26:15 +0000 http://sdawara.wordpress.com/2006/11/21/trendy-india-defies-the-rest-of-the-world/#comment-1886 [...] Santosh Dawara uses Google Trends to demonstrate how certain trends in India are in contrast with the rest of the world, while unearthing some other amusing facts. [...]

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