Gawker: valleywag, google trends

Julia Allison Now Mostly Famous for Dancing with a Quarterback

Owen Thomas — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 16:38:58 EDT

Dating columnist Julia Allison must be figuring that everything she has done is meaningless compared to someone paid to throw a ball around. Her Internet popularity has peaked after her dalliance with a football player.

Earlier today, "Julia Allison" was the No. 1 search term on Google Trends, which measures fast-rising searches. (It's down to No. 3 at the moment, behind "scott podsednik" and "lil kim wardrobe malfunction".)Why are large numbers of people who have never heard Allison's name before trying to Google the relentless egoblogger who, despite her best efforts to cultivate fame without achievement, remains little-known outside of New York media circles?

It has to be her Saturday-night romance with Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler. Reports of her standing between Cutler's beefy thighs at a nightclub have brought her to the attention of a whole new audience: football fans. How frustrating this must be for someone who drunkenly insists that she's a "brilliant businesswoman." Now she's best known as a football player's Saturday night girl.

The Sick Internet Joke About 9/11: ✈ ▌▌

Owen Thomas — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 14:30:33 EST

An airplane flies into two vertical objects: For many ordinary New Yorkers, it's a horrible, still-living memory. For Internet commenters, it's absolutely hilarious.

A user on eBaum's World, a site which posts pictures and invites often profane discussion, suggested his peers search on a string of icons — "✈ ▌▌" — and thereby launch it onto Google Trends, the search engine's tracker for swiftly rising Internet phenomena.

The trick worked; Google's algorithm declared the glyph's rise "volcanic." And despite a surge of protests about its tastelessness, the Googlers have yet to censor the term, as they've been known to do with other offensive searches which show up on Google Trends, like a swastika symbol which showed up last summer.

Officially, Google says it has robots which take care of this: "The algorithm also filters out spam and removes inappropriate material." In reality? The 9/11 hack shows how easy it is to fool Google.

Stupid rock band totally pwns Google

Paul Boutin — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:40:00 EDT

Google's Hot Trends page has been gamed before, but today's #1 spot is the best ever — a dorky-white-guys rock band named Captain Caucasian and the Raging Idiots. No KKK references, just a bunch of guys with guitars and a singer whose baseball cap is two sizes too big. While we wait for Clay Shirky and Cory Doctorow to explain how this is a huge, huge victory for real people over the evil corporate monster that is the music industry, Google, or maybe it's Starbucks, I crawled through the band's traffic-slammed website to dig up their video for "Bust a Move."

Americans more interested in "cupcakes" than "financial crisis"

Jackson West — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 18:40:00 EDT

Want to know why newspapers are dying? Because they've been running boring cover stories about that confusing economic meltdown on Wall Street instead of what Americans really care about — stuff like wizards, cupcakes and sex toys. Bristol Palin headlines can stay above the fold, though. Online searchers love them some pregnant teenagers with high school-dropout baby daddies. [Mother Jones]

Sarah Palin's typo-ridden LinkedIn profile

Nicholas Carlson — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:20:00 EDT

A tipster discovered Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's LinkedIn profile, typos and all. LinkedIn says it's legitimate — we just wonder which unlucky intern got the chore of typing it in. Surprised anyone bothered to find it? Don't be. According to Google Trends, Sarah Palin gets more search queries than either of the two men at the top of the tickets. Probably doesn't hurt that Google counts what Hitwise says are the very numerous searches for "Sarah Palin Vogue Magazine," "Sarah Palin Photos," "Sarah Palin Bikini Photos," "Sarah Palin Nude," and "Sarah Palin Naked." John McCain was a handsome man in his bomber-pilot youth, but not many of us feel the need to see him naked now. The Internet's obsession for Sarah Palin, according to the Google Trends chart below, knows no bounds.

Yahoo and eBay doing great in Google searches

Nick Douglas — Thu, 25 May 2006 14:42:02 EDT

Yahoo and eBay, two companies that survived the bubble just to get outclassed by some Stanford pricks, cut a deal that embeds each deep inside the other's pants. EBay's PayPal system will handle Yahoo payments, and Yahoo will handle all third-party graphical ads on eBay.

Valley analysts act as if Yahoo and eBay are losing to some giant enemy, but everything sure looks healthy — look! Their trend lines on Google Search are just fantastic!

Yahoo and eBay Form Advertising Alliance [NYT]
Yahoo and eBay searches [Google Trends]