If you’re bored to death with articles and spotlight pieces that sum up the past year, here’s an interesting and fun way of doing it yourself: Google Trends. Ever check it out?
Google Trends is a Google Labs project aimed at keeping in track with the latest in user search trends according to time frame, region and sub-region. You can find out visually how many times a certain topic was searched for.
In addition, it’ll provide you with a news-reference-volume graph, which shows you how many times your search subject occurred in Google News and major headlines that went hand-in-hand with that search trend.
(*Disclaimer: Because this is still a Google Labs project still being developed, results are not always accurate nor are they the definitive word on user habits. However, according to the Google Team, they are “updating the information provided by Google Trends daily???.)
Just typing in a few search terms, like “Iraq???, “Britney Spears???, “mountain climbing??? will generate interesting results.
So what does a “PDF??? search trend for 2007 look like? Take a look.
Take a look at the news reference volume graph as it hits a peak with the news of the PDF submission for ISO certification. It’s search popularity hits a plateau. A natural occurrence with headlines being posted everywhere?
Moreover, Google Trends lets you keep “up to date??? with the past as well with an option for viewing older search trends—a good way to compare and contrast the past and the present. And why not with the PDF?
Here’s a look at 2006—the year of the Microsoft-XPS kerfuffle.
The search volume is pretty much up there consistently, until June when it started to dip a bit with the announcement that MS was going to pull out the PDF support from Office 2007. Search trends that reflect the climax and resolution of the conflict?
By the way, in case you couldn’t tell, I am NOT a statistics analyst by any means. However, I think you can get a sense of how the “trendiness??? of our beloved format comes about in relation to news events.
You can see PDF search popularity dipping and climbing accordingly—and that’s just with the term “PDF??? alone. Try out “PDF” variations (PDF documents, PDF converters, PDF software, PDF. . . .) and see what comes up.
So was 2007 a better, hotter, trendier PDF year than 2006? What’s your verdict?
Happy New Year’s from Investintech.com!
