Why Is Corky Romano No. 16?
This has little to nothing to do with HIM, but hey, it’s approaching a holiday weekend, and I’m in the midst of putting together a spanking new Salary Survey for this year (any suggestions?), and I just came across an article that actually made me smile after an incredibly hectic week of moving, lots of work and little sleep.
I’ve just discovered
Google Trends, thanks to
this article in the Washington Post, via msnbc.com. I’m not sure how long this has been around, but it’s a Google tool that puts together a list of the day’s top searches.
I immediately thought back to some of the searches I’ve done. I truly believe that Google makes life less fun at times, because when I’m struggling to come up with the title or artist of a song, or I can’t place what that guy in the movie I’m watching was in before, I can simply pull my computer on my lap and type in snippets of song lyrics or “scary guy from No Country for Old Men,” and I’ll have my answer in under a second. Google takes the guesswork out of life. It’s settled countless arguments that I’ve had with friends and family members, and having the answers at my fingertips gives me a great opportunity to access the page, print out the information and tape it to the forehead of whoever’s arguing with me (as long as I’m right, of course).
When I think of all the random things I’ve Googled over the years, I must say that I’m hoping that I’m not what I Google. I tend to get rather wordy in my searches when I can’t find what I want. This morning, I was looking for information on the South Carolina economy to see how many health care jobs there are in the state (this is for a supplement we do in
ADVANCE), and I became more and more frustrated as I couldn’t find what I wanted. My final (unsuccessful) search was “south carolina economy health care jobs employment industry medical records.” My word! What does that say about me? And don’t even get me started on some of the other searches I’ve done: “pin up girl light switch cover” (I’m decorating the new apartment), “landlord makes you have a certain move-out time” (at least mine did, and I wanted to see if others could sympathize), and “sugaring hair how to make the wax” (answer: don’t. It hurts.).
So it made me feel worlds better to see what others are typing into the famous search engine, and to see that people are hilarious, curious and interested in some strange stuff. I couldn’t help cracking up at some of the things that people searched. And when I finished reading the top 50 searches of today, July 3, I really, really wanted to go to the Naperville Rib Fest, whatever that is. I also found myself wondering what the heck a butler bag is, and also questioning why so many people chose to search the term “faceless aliens.”
All in all, Google Trends is a lot like cracking open the collective skull of America and taking a peek inside (even the president Googles, after all). What’s in there is humorous at times (the dual spellings of “samuel clemens” and “samuel clemmons” ranked Nos. 1 and 3, respectively, on June 30), slightly disturbing (“world of death” ranks No. 74 on July 2 and “cherry bomb” was No. 63 on June 29), slightly disappointing (“tila tequila shot at love 2” and “who won tila tequila” on two separate days—and OK, I admit that I watched the first season), and slightly confusing (“giant killer snakes” was No. 1 on June 25).
Besides confirming that no one, not anyone, uses capital letters in Internet searches, the Google Trends site is definitely good for a few laughs, and it’s a good peek into what’s going on in the brains of Americans.