More Hive Mind

May. 22, 2007 at 12:00am Eastern by Barry Schwartz
The Google Trends home page now has a section named "Hot Trends," which shows the hottest queries for the day. You can also look back historically and see the hottest queries for that day. Plus, Google Trends upgraded the trends history to show not only country data in the regions box but also state and even city detail - worldwide.
What defines a "hot trend"? Google told me they use a very sophisticated algorithm to determine what is "hot." I was told to think of it as Google noticing a "sudden rise" in a query phrase that is not in the norm for that query. The higher the rise, the hotter the query is. Google has a "hotness level" score for these queries, the hottest is "volcanic", followed by "on fire," "spicy," "medium" and "mild."
The Google Trends home page has been enhanced to include these Hot Trends. It will show the top ten hot trends for the day, for the United States (that's the only country currently being supported). Read on...