
Google Correlate by Drawing  - franze
http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/draw
======
lhnz
Interesting to see what is dying: English Chinese Dictionaries, radio
stations, Altavista, lyrics, text messaging, Flash.

[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:deVob01-p...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:deVob01-p_N&t=weekly#default,20)

And look what's getting more popular: Porn video sites, video sites, Facebook,
Mac computers and how to work them -- particuarly how to take screenshots:
this should be a tip-off to those of you working at Apple doing UX. ;)

[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:AbjtmD0iL...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:AbjtmD0iL9w&t=weekly#default,20)

Some of the stuff you would guess was becoming less or more popular but there
is other stuff which is less obvious.

edit: This is super interesting:
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:SnghYCuBW...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:SnghYCuBWFH&t=weekly#default,90)

Looks like Hacker News is gaining popularity exponentially, too. :)

~~~
thedaveoflife
Less popular as a Google search doesn't necessarily mean less popular, in some
cases. For instance, I saw text messaging on your down trending list but that
is obviously as popular as ever. People probably just don't feel the need to
search it because it has become so ubiquitous.

~~~
lhnz
That is true: this only measures current interest levels. A decrease in the
current interest level of text messaging only means that people are not trying
to find out about it as much.

However, why did it only start trending downwards in 2008? Text messaging was
ubiquitous way before 2008.

[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id%3AdeVob01...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id%3AdeVob01-p_N&e=text+messaging&t=weekly#default,20)

Could it be the iPhone? Could it be the iPhone facebook app? Could it be BBM?
(Or maybe I'm just reading too much into this...)

------
pud
The "comic book" link on Correlate is awesome. More sites should have
documentation like this. <http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/comic>

~~~
hasslblad
Google did this when they first launched Chrome too -
<http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/index.html>

~~~
Lewisham
One (interesting?) thing to note is the Chrome comic was drawn by Scott
McCloud, professional comic book artist extroidinare.

The Correlate comic was drawn by Manu Cornet, who's a Googler:
<https://plus.google.com/106154493978299996445/posts>

------
joeyespo
This is fun. But apparently not "great fun" because according to this, great
fun only happened in between 2005 and 2010.

[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:XfvUJGqnv...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:XfvUJGqnvo_&t=weekly)

~~~
thinkzig
Things are never as fun as they were back in the good old days. :)

------
ayanb
From the whitepaper

"Google Correlate employs a novel approximate nearest neighbor (ANN) algorithm
over millions of candidate queries in an online search tree to produce results
similar to the batch-based approach employed by Google Flu Trends but in a
fraction of a second."

\--

~~~
zerostar07
Good, so i dont have to worry i m bringing google down / google is going to
put a cap on this

------
javanix
Ok, that is way too addicting to visit during work hours.

I drew a standard bell-curve peaking in 2007 and then trailing off to zero
into 2011 and everything was either Myspace searches or Washington Mutual
credit searches.

Pretty nifty.

------
3pt14159
I did a steady growth curve followed by a steep drop off: The result is
amazing:
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:lSkySxGeo...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:lSkySxGeov3&t=weekly)

------
danvk
If you like the drawing interaction itself and want to re-use it elsewhere,
there's a self-contained version at <http://dygraphs.com/tests/drawing.html>
which also features a zoom and eraser tool.

------
notintokyo
How is this so fast? I thought to compare charts like these you have to slide
every chart over every offset to get the best match?

~~~
danvk
(I work on correlate)

The gist of why this is so fast is:

1\. For the vast majority of queries, we only need to compare hashes of the
time series, not the time series themselves.

2\. We make no attempt to detect shifted correlations. The correlations you
see are all synchronized in time.

------
kurige
1\. Take historical end-of-day market data for a stock market index fund and
graph it on Google Correlate.

2\. Find out what terms closely track said index.

3\. Set up an auto-trader that responds to changes in the search frequency for
said terms.

4\. Sit back and watch the money roll in.

~~~
sc00ter
Possibly, but apparently 5 years of USD to EUR exchange rate data most closely
correlates to searches for the king tut exibit!

[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:l9QRCEVZg...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:l9QRCEVZgQT&t=weekly#)

~~~
kurige
That's awesome! Bizzare correlation, but awesome.

How did you graph the data? Did you enter the time series data manually?

~~~
sc00ter
Er - no. Downloaded from oanda.com, uploaded to google correlate.

------
anigbrowl
Correlate is great, but the hand-drawn year-by-year search is really not all
that useful - wither you have something in mind and prime your graph, or you
get the obvious things.

Monthly correlations, however, would be tremendously useful. Every industry
has its own calendar, conference season, and economic 'tides', and
understanding these is a key marketing task.

------
artursapek
Google is beginning to do things that I think are going to kick current
market-research strategies off their feet. They have most of our lives being
fed through their systems; they know what's going on in the world better than
anyone.

------
iy56
And if you visit the parent page (<http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/>),
you can search for a term and see it's graph, along with strongly correlated
queries.

------
erikig
This can be an interesting way to identify hidden yearly trends too.

Drawing a zig zag with peaks (more sawtooth than sine wave) at beginnings of
the years yields some interesting results and some things I've never even
heard of like "slapped cheek syndrome" or fifth disease.

Apparently people are also extremely curious about the carbs in a
grapefruit/orange at around the same time...

Weird.

[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:xI5dDtGz4...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:xI5dDtGz4kc&t=weekly)

~~~
danshapiro
I think you're seeing new years' diet resolutions.

------
reustle
So the "web" really is a fad...

[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:ie4JCwnHd...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:ie4JCwnHdHZ&t=weekly)

~~~
lachenmayer
Quite the opposite; the web is becoming so ubiquitous that no-one has to find
out more about it anymore.

------
cabirum
formatting hard drives is cool again!
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id%3Al7D8FQk...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id%3Al7D8FQkv5Y-&e=how+to+format+a+hard+drive&t=weekly)

------
boredguy8
"Free Text Messaging" is an interesting 4 year period, though it looks like
it's dead as a search term now. Is this because of Google Voice? Or did people
give up on the idea?

[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:g2VSqRc0n...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:g2VSqRc0np2&t=weekly)

~~~
T-hawk
Everybody has unlimited texting on their phones now so there's no need. There
was a time when unlimited texting was rare and not all phones even had SMS, so
it was popular to use various free web-to-SMS gateways if you were at a
computer and your recipient may not be. I used AT&T's gateway in particular to
message friends for a few years before I got an SMS phone. There were also
shady ad-strewn "free texting" gateways, some acting as frontends to the
official ones, some with a Turk behind the scenes, and even some that didn't
work at all but just faked a texting interface to serve up ads.

------
geuis
I drew a random hockey stick. It kind of matches the rise of dubstep pretty
closely
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id%3AOjXjy3O...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id%3AOjXjy3OzFbC&e=dubstep&t=weekly)

~~~
addandsubtract
I got "youtube mp3 download" with a similar curve.

------
ColinDabritz
So it looks like 'Depression' is on the school schedule (see the spikes down
for winter break, the heavy correlation with academic topics)
[https://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=depression&...](https://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=depression&e=magnetism&t=weekly#)

I wonder how much is psychology research, and how much is side effects of
school?

Some of the coincident correlations are really funny.
[https://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=depression&...](https://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=depression&e=magnetism&t=weekly#)

It looks like OS X Lion had an unofficial mascot! (or the movie promotion
timeline matched the lion hype buildup)

------
flaviojuvenal
GIFs are coming back. I believe it is because the huge popularity of GIF
flooded Tumblrs of teenagers:
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:4voTkH47-...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:4voTkH47-PL&t=weekly)

Also, it is nice to see summer related results:
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:Rhcg3luEC...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:Rhcg3luECRt&t=weekly)
Spider Vein, according to Wikipedia, may be caused by "environmental damage
such as that caused by sun or cold exposure". And Asiatic Lily is a flower
that grows on July.

------
shazam
0.9665 correlation between "iphone" and "cancel tmobile". Amazing.

[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=iphone&t...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=iphone&t=weekly&filter=iphone)

------
socialmediaking
I got this on my first draw. I was looking at things growing rapidly from 2009
on. What are the odds? <http://i.imgur.com/yYL1D.png>

------
shawndumas
brown recluse

[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id%3AiGRSgJR...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id%3AiGRSgJRIYH9&e=brown+recluse&t=weekly)

~~~
nollidge
hockey arena

[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id%3AP3Onqn6...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id%3AP3Onqn66m-f&e=hockey+arena&t=weekly)

------
shawndumas
Bowl Championship Series

[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:bg8K8Ts1o...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:bg8K8Ts1oEK&t=weekly)

------
earlyriser
Testing a yearly and incremental peak give me the "nc state basketball". I
guess something like this could give me the Oscars or Superbowl changing the
peak time:
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:nspW2uQjx...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:nspW2uQjx78&t=weekly#)

------
TomGullen
Very cool but quite useless. I guess you might be able to spot emerging trends
if you spent a bit of time on it though.

~~~
fsniper
It's not useless. It has real world academic use cases where researchers need
data which might be related. It's also documented in the comic book of this
service. Also this is a service becoming real because of a real world problem.

~~~
TomGullen
It's useful yes but the usefulness is derived from the data not people drawing
lines on a screen! I don't think the drawing a line on a screen allows for
much more data discovery .

~~~
fsniper
Yes sure. But it can be used by dataset input too.

------
ayanb
"Windows Mobile Pocket PC" , "Palm Treo Software", "Blackberry forum" and
"flash flv" all have the same curve :)

[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:BbGJxKXAQ...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:BbGJxKXAQA0&t=weekly)

------
sirclueless
Hah. I did an exponential curve and sure enough there was "dropbox" at 0.9220
correlation.

~~~
frankiewarren
My exponential curve beginning in 2010 yielded "dubstep download." I guess we
know what the kids are listening to these days.

------
zerostar07
Apparently the acronym "OOMF" is hot right now:
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:lhfq3Utw3...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:lhfq3Utw3XD&t=weekly)

~~~
kubindurion
since I didn't know it is one of:

 _OUT OF MY FACE_ OUT OF MY FOLLOWERS

I post it so you don't have to google ;p

------
sunspeck
The comments here suggest that many folks don't realize you can correlate to a
precise dataset, not just a hand-drawn trendline.

Click the link next to the search button. "Enter your own data" or "Edit this
data".

Anyone got a good time series?

------
lelf
Different time period gives “Oops”

[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=hacker+news&...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=hacker+news&t=daily)

Frustrating.

------
jaekwon
meta hockeystick, anyone?

[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:OLR9M7vEA...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:OLR9M7vEAbQ&t=weekly)

~~~
moultano
Git has apparently grown right alongside hackernews.
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=hacker+news&...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=hacker+news&t=weekly#default,30)

~~~
artursapek
"Hot gf" is trolling a lot of these time series.

------
judofyr
<http://d.pr/VHnF>

Makes me wonder if web developers finally switched to full SSL, or if browsers
stopped showing the error…

------
makepanic
really love this: "football camps"
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:Vv0RVxr9d...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:Vv0RVxr9dJK&t=weekly#)

------
shawndumas
treo!

[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:YJ9-DbmR7...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:YJ9-DbmR7bM&t=weekly)

------
swah
I wish there was someone I could talk about this IRL.

------
tonio09
Google Correlate as well as Trends are awesome. Why is google providing these
data mining services for free to everyone? How are they making money from it?

------
clistctrl
This is seriously an awesome proof of technology, but what is a practical
purpose for it?

~~~
danberger
Apart from just being able to search by drawing (cool concept in it of
itself), the practical purpose would obviously be the reverse: looking at the
graph of any search query. But obviously they will never release that :)

~~~
omh
The main part of the correlate site lets you do this:

<http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/>

------
wavephorm
Doesn't work on an iPad.

------
knowtheory
Well. That doesn't work on an iPad.

------
schrototo
This would be infinitely more useful if it was backed by some actual _data_
instead of those utterly useless search activity patterns. Why not combine a
search like this with something like Wolfram Alpha?

What a waste...

edit: Seriously, wouldn't this be so much cooler if it gave us a new way to
explore mathematical and scientific data?

If we could draw any curve and it would present us with matching constants,
physical laws, mathematical proofs & theorems that have some correlation with
the input data, chemical and biological data points, information from
sociological studies, historical statistics...

