5 ms·

Google Trends appears to be next. They changed the interface under "Explore". Few featured and works poorly on tablets.

gwern 13y ago
If you were curious, my shutdown analysis ( http://www.gwern.net/Google%20shutdowns http://www.gwern.net/Google%20shutdowns ) estimated Trends had a 52% chance of surviving 5 years (dating from March).
- hownottowrite 13y ago
  I saw your study when it was released. Really excellent work. I suspect Trends will survive in some form but it has really changed over the last 24 months. It's becoming far less useful as a research tool, which seems to be Google's overall trend from transparent->opaque.
  - Matt_Cutts 13y ago
    For a while, spammers were using data from Google Trends to find new phrases/topics to target for autogenerated spam. See http://www.stopthehacker.com/2010/04/05/google-trends-for-seo-poisoning/ http://www.stopthehacker.com/2010/04/05/google-trends-for-se... for example. The new Google Trends UI is still useful for hot topics (Hey, Oracle just won the America's Cup!), but less useful for spammers.
    - jacques_chester 13y ago
      Not just auto spam; a lot of sites haunted the trends board and wrote stories. The most hilarious example was when 4chan bulked searched for "justin bieber syphillis" and created a burst of stories across the web.
    - hownottowrite 13y ago
      That's unfortunate. It was a really useful tool. The Hot Topics are not particularly useful, well, unless you want to know what People Magazine is going to print in their next issue.
  - gwern 13y ago
    Yeah, I'm a little worried that I'm going to have a demarcation problem when I do the 5-year followup - where Trends will have changed so much that I won't know whether I should consider it alive or dead. Even while I was researching it for its entry, I was coming across all sorts of complaints from different time periods about how the functionality was being constantly chopped down.

gwern 13y ago

If you were curious, my shutdown analysis ( http://www.gwern.net/Google%20shutdowns http://www.gwern.net/Google%20shutdowns ) estimated Trends had a 52% chance of surviving 5 years (dating from March).

hownottowrite 13y ago
I saw your study when it was released. Really excellent work. I suspect Trends will survive in some form but it has really changed over the last 24 months. It's becoming far less useful as a research tool, which seems to be Google's overall trend from transparent->opaque.
- Matt_Cutts 13y ago
  For a while, spammers were using data from Google Trends to find new phrases/topics to target for autogenerated spam. See http://www.stopthehacker.com/2010/04/05/google-trends-for-seo-poisoning/ http://www.stopthehacker.com/2010/04/05/google-trends-for-se... for example. The new Google Trends UI is still useful for hot topics (Hey, Oracle just won the America's Cup!), but less useful for spammers.
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    Not just auto spam; a lot of sites haunted the trends board and wrote stories. The most hilarious example was when 4chan bulked searched for "justin bieber syphillis" and created a burst of stories across the web.
  - hownottowrite 13y ago
    That's unfortunate. It was a really useful tool. The Hot Topics are not particularly useful, well, unless you want to know what People Magazine is going to print in their next issue.
- gwern 13y ago
  Yeah, I'm a little worried that I'm going to have a demarcation problem when I do the 5-year followup - where Trends will have changed so much that I won't know whether I should consider it alive or dead. Even while I was researching it for its entry, I was coming across all sorts of complaints from different time periods about how the functionality was being constantly chopped down.