thingoid

According to a report in The Age, Melbourne is the second most lonely city in the world - based on a Google Trends search for the word “lonely”. Talk about drawing a long bow!

A search today shows the following as the top ten searchers for “lonely”:

1. Dublin Ireland
2. Melbourne Australia
3. Auckland New Zealand
4. Sydney Australia
5. Perth Australia
6. London United Kingdom
7. Vancouver Canada
8. Brentford United Kingdom
9. San Francisco United States
10. Manchester United Kingdom

But how about searching for “lonely planet”:

1. Dublin Ireland
2. Melbourne Australia
3. London United Kingdom
4. Auckland New Zealand
5. Sydney Australia
6. Brisbane Australia
7. Adelaide Australia
8. Perth Australia
9. Edinburgh United Kingdom
10. Bletchley United Kingdom

That’s almost identical, isn’t it? I think The Age could just as easily have reported that Melbournians (indeed, Australians in general) are avid consumers of travel guide books.

Even trying some synonyms like alone, loneliness, and isolated don’t show anything conclusive.

Why?

The Google Trends about page explains:

Keep in mind that instead of measuring overall interest in a topic, Google Trends shows users’ propensity to search for that topic on Google on a relative basis. For example, just because a particular region isn’t on the Top Regions list for the term “haircut” doesn’t necessarily mean that people there have decided to stage a mass rebellion against society’s conventions. It could be that people in that region might not use Google to find a barber, use a different term when doing their searches, or simply search for so many other topics unrelated to haircuts that searches for “haircut” make up a very small portion of the search volume from that region when compared to other regions.

One could substitute “lonely” for “haircut” in that explanation and using Google Trends data to conclude that Melbourne is the second most lonely city in the world is shown to be incredibly foolish.

Apparently the story originates from Reuters. Wherever it came from, that’s sloppy, sloppy journalism.

Ah, the New England Journal of Medicine.

I always found it a thumping good read, in the sense that the bound copies in the medical library made a very pleasing thump when dropped from a height onto a reading desk.

Anyway, how about this little item? Apparently a doctor - a fellow in allergy and immunology, no less - used Google to diagnose a difficult case.

And the search engine got it right:

“How did you make that diagnosis?” asked the professor. Came the reply, “Well, I had the skin-biopsy report, and I had a chart of the immunologic tests. So I entered the salient features into Google, and it popped right up.”

Personally I’d like to think that there was still some professional input and judgement used by the doctor here. Even so, as the correspondent rightly observed, William Osler must be turning over in his grave.

(And yes, I did use Google to find that link on Osler…)

Do you have a web page or part of a web site that you’d like to keep hidden from Google (and other prying web crawlers and robots)? (more…)

Is it inevitable that everyone who writes about computers must eventually do a bit about Google? Well, why fight it? Here goes… (more…)