

Investigating sine waves in Google Trends - emmett
http://cryptogon.com/?p=9526

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neilk
I looked up the causes of tinnitus to see if they were cyclical too.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinnitus#Causes_of_subjective_t...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinnitus#Causes_of_subjective_tinnitus)

"Ear infection" has a similar pattern. Although there I'm baffled by the huge
spike exactly at Christmas followed by nothing in January.

[http://www.google.com/trends?q=ear+infection&ctab=0&...](http://www.google.com/trends?q=ear+infection&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0)

Tinnitus is sometimes caused by depression. Depression can be seasonal, and
there's another vaguely cyclical graph that follows the seasons of the
Northern Hemisphere. Spiking in the months after Christmas (bills) and another
big one in late spring / early summer (student exams?) and then the onset of
winter. There's a big reduction over the summer, and interestingly, a negative
spike right at Christmas. Lately, there might be some confounding searches for
economic depression -- at least that's how I interpret the latter half of
2008.

[http://www.google.com/trends?q=depression&ctab=0&geo...](http://www.google.com/trends?q=depression&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0)

~~~
pygy
Stress and depression are also strongly correlated with religion, but less so
with God or prayer. There's a drop in the searches for religion around
christmas...

[http://www.google.com/trends?q=religion,+stress,+depression&...](http://www.google.com/trends?q=religion,+stress,+depression&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0)

Notice also the spike in stress and depression searches around Romney's speech
on religion, we'll come to that later on.

-

It's even more interesting if you look at it region per region.

* US: [http://www.google.com/trends?q=stress,+depression,+religion,...](http://www.google.com/trends?q=stress,+depression,+religion,+shoulder&ctab=0&geo=us&geor=all&date=all&sort=1)

* UK: [http://www.google.com/trends?q=stress,+depression,+religion,...](http://www.google.com/trends?q=stress,+depression,+religion,+shoulder&ctab=0&geo=gb&geor=all&date=all&sort=1)

* Australia: [http://www.google.com/trends?q=stress,+depression,+religion,...](http://www.google.com/trends?q=stress,+depression,+religion,+shoulder&ctab=0&geo=au&geor=all&date=all&sort=1)

There are different patterns in all three regions, but the correlation holds.
I took shoulder as a neutral term, to be sure the variations were not related
to some global trend in search volume.

-

Surpisingly, though, the Romney speech spike is bigger in worldwide queries
than in US specific ones.

At the world scale, the spike is also very correlated with feet, flower and
shoulder...

It's not the case in the US... And the Romney spike is much smaller when
compared to the average frequency of each term.

* World: [http://www.google.com/trends?q=religion,+feet,+flower,+shoul...](http://www.google.com/trends?q=religion,+feet,+flower,+shoulder&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=1)

* US: [http://www.google.com/trends?q=religion,+feet,+flower,+shoul...](http://www.google.com/trends?q=religion,+feet,+flower,+shoulder&ctab=0&geo=us&date=all&sort=1)

Do you have any idea of what happened worldwide in November 2007? Is it a
Google bug? Or was there an overall spike in search queries at that point?

~~~
neilk
Ok, double weirdness. Earlier I was seeing spikes in late 2007 for almost any
query.

At first I thought it was confirming my theory because that's when the housing
bubble was really popping. But it was also there for control words, including
"the". So I reported a bug in their forum.

But now that's all gone. Either that was speedy corrective action or a
transient problem.

~~~
pbhj
I see a general trend on all queries peaking around March and late November.
This matches what I see on retail websites I have access to the backend of.

Searches like money, sex and music are quite flat but appear to have a low
profile match to this general trend.

"sun cream" and "snowman" are clear counter examples.

~~~
pygy
Looking at the detailed trafic, year per year, I can't see any such tendency.
Some years, there are some bumps for sex around November or March, but never
both, and their amplitude isn't bigger than the seemingly random fluctuations.

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aristus
Another interesting one is pi: <http://www.google.com/trends?q=pi>

Ignore the spike near 14 March and look at the log low dip in summer and the
sharp upslope in August-September.

Other very seasonal queries: <http://www.google.com/trends?q=mushrooms>

Also, for some reason, "DYI", "pi", and "horses" all had large spikes around
the end of 2007. Anyone want to guess why? Data gremlins?

<http://www.google.com/trends?q=diy%2Cpi>
<http://www.google.com/trends?q=horses%2Cdyi%2Cpi>

~~~
chengmi
I wouldn't be surprised if the "pi" trend correlates well with vacation times
in academia.

~~~
aristus
Sure, but are school curricula really that well coordinated across the
english-speaking world? I'm kind of surprised that the graphs match so well:

[http://www.google.com/trends?q=natural+logarithm%2Cbase+10%2...](http://www.google.com/trends?q=natural+logarithm%2Cbase+10%2Cdirac)

<http://www.google.com/trends?q=hamlet%2Csocrates%2Ctruman>

~~~
chengmi
We may be reading too much into this:
[http://www.google.com/trends?q=base+10%2Cdirac%2Ccheerios...](http://www.google.com/trends?q=base+10%2Cdirac%2Ccheerios&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0)

~~~
pygy
Yes, but :
[http://www.google.com/trends?q=base+10,dirac,+wrist+band&...](http://www.google.com/trends?q=base+10,dirac,+wrist+band&ctab=0&geo=us&geor=all&date=all&sort=0)

This is a US specific plot, but the world wide one is similar. There are
plausible explainations for a correlation between the type of breakfast and
the school cycle.

The spike at the end of 2007 appears for any queries when you look at the
world-wide data.

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robotrout
Fun stuff! Yes, it seems to correlate to "runny nose"
[http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=runny%20nose%2Cring...](http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=runny%20nose%2Cringing%20ears&cmpt=q)

... and in Australia, both seem to peak in the July time period, as expected.
[http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=runny%20nose%2Cring...](http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=runny%20nose%2Cringing%20ears&geo=AU&cmpt=q)

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ralph
"job search":
[http://www.google.com/trends?q=job+search&ctab=0&geo...](http://www.google.com/trends?q=job+search&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0)

Interesting dip come December and then a spurt that more than makes up for it
in January. New year, new job?

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gojomo
Cold and flu season: head congestion, medications which may affect the ears.

To test weather-based theories: compare northern hemisphere and southern
hemisphere search trends. (Unfortunately, there's not enough search traffic on
[ringing ears] in southern-hemisphere english-speaking regions to be sure...
though the thin Australia data is vaguely consistent with the idea their
highest traffic is mid-year.)

~~~
peregrine
Whenever I get bad sinus/ear infections during winter my ears ring.The
ears/face are very closely related and a simple cold/flu can spark an
infection.

