Google announced today that YouTube searches are now going to be part of Google Trends, which means we can now learn all kinds of useless but oh-so-interesting information.
Such as the fact that goats — yes goats — were the top trending animal on YouTube this month, beating out the ever-popular cats and dogs. And that Rebecca Black searches spike every week on the day after Thursday and before Saturday.
Essentially, what Google has done is added YouTube to the Trends interface. Searchers can now keep their trend searches web-wide, or limit them to Images, News, Products, and now YouTube. Given that YouTube is a bigger online video destination than perhaps all its competitors combined, including Facebook, Yahoo, and VEVO, you’re getting a massive slice of the online video-watching data when selecting YouTube as a source.
AI Weekly
The must-read newsletter for AI and Big Data industry written by Khari Johnson, Kyle Wiggers, and Seth Colaner.
Included with VentureBeat Insider and VentureBeat VIP memberships.
While it’s true that there’s a lot of useless data and noise in Trends, there is, however, some degree of hope in this news: Harlem Shake, as a phenomenon, may be starting to lose steam:
One real challenge with Google Trends is that it only presents data in a relative way. So, for instance, the chart above doesn’t say anything at all about the absolute number of Harlem Shake searches — beyond that fact that there were enough to chart — it simply reveals trends over time. That makes it tough to compare countries, for instance, since it’s unclear whether Brazilians care much about the Harlem Shake or not compared to Americans.
Oh and those goats?
If you’re as lame and oblivious to popular culture as me, you’ll have no clue what that’s all about. This will give you a clue, and probably a few minutes amusement:
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Learn More