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This is search traffic data. I spend a lot of time on HN, but I'm not sure I've ever Googled for "Y Combinator". The people who will tend to Google the term ar
by mechanical_fish 18y ago
This is search traffic data. I spend a lot of time on HN, but I'm not sure I've ever Googled for "Y Combinator".
The people who will tend to Google the term are going to be folks who don't really know about YC, but have heard the name and want to know more. A lot of those folks are going to be prospective investors, employees, acquaintances, or local media contacts of YC companies and their founders -- YC companies which, by no coincidence at all, are located where YC is located: MA and CA.
But that's just the caveat, intended to keep us from jumping to the obvious conclusion: CA and MA dominate the search results because those are the startup hubs! People who are interested in startups tend to have already moved there!
And just because that's the most tempting conclusion to jump to doesn't mean that it's necessarily wrong.
- furiouslol 18y agoMaybe those people were searching for "Y Combinator" - the higher order function, instead of "Y Combinator" - the incubator?
- babyshake 18y agoIn that case, wouldn't you expect the distribution to be more spread out than it is?
- jsmcgd 18y agoProbably not because the kind of person who would be interested in a Y Combinator would most likely be situated in high tech industries or more esteemed universities which are located in Massachusetts and California.
- babyshake 18y agoWhat about Google as the web's command line? The Awesome Bar provides some stiff competition, but I use my browser search bar (Ctrl K) about half as often as I do the address bar (Ctrl L), and at a macro level like Insights it's safe to say that searches can be a surrogate for collective interest.