Google Insights

Came across this on the internet the other day and thought it was a great way to illustrate, albeit unscientifically, broad patterns in the public consciousness. Google insights allows you to plot the daily number of web searches for a particular search term through time (plotted as a function of total searches, explained here if you're interested). As an example, here's the worldwide results for terms including 'London 2012':


There's a clear peak during summer 2005, when the games were awarded to London, and in summer 2008 during the Beijing Olympics. It's also evident that interest has been growing during 2011 as the games approach. Clearly, worldwide search terms often match up to real events, and give an indication of what's in the public awareness. So, let's apply this to the Arctic.

Starting off simply, here's the record for 'Arctic' under the science category ('all subjects' just returns loads of stuff about the Arctic Monkeys).


There's a couple of things to notice here. Firstly, interest in the Arctic during the past two years seems to have waned, especially when compared to 2004 and 2005. Also, searches increase clearly during the Northern
Hemisphere winter. I found the overall decrease surprising though, so decided to try 'Arctic Sea Ice', to see if the number of searches related to climate change had increased.


This is a bit more promising! Just after the summer of 2007, when record low ice extent was recorded in the Arctic, there is a clear and sustained rise in searches. However, interest has tailed off during the past couple of years and the very low sea-ice extent during the 2011 summer only causes a small and short-lived peak, nothing like what happened in 2007. Perhaps news of shrinking sea-ice isn't really news any more?

Finally, Frozen Planet caused quite an impact during late 2011, or did it? (searches for 'Arctic' in the UK)


I realise this is completely non-scientific and probably shows almost nothing, but I found it quite interesting!