In the wake of the tragedy of
September 11 in this
country, I thought it might be interesting to see what impact the event
has had on search patterns on the Internet. I have analyzed
four days worth of searches done through
Metacrawlers, such as Dogpile, etc. The days for which I have data are
September 15, 29, October 6,
& October 13. These are
four snapshots in time of what people have shown interest in in the
aftermath of a major event. It
may give a little insight as to how people are actually using the
Internet for information that is important to them.
Description of the groupings
In order to present some kind of picture of the
traffic, I had to organize the searches into some kind of groupings.
Based on the patterns that I observed in the initial review of
the data, I selected Osama bin Laden, Nostradamus, maps
& airlines, terror & the Taliban, specific targets
of the terrorists, gas, anthrax & cipro, and people who
were involved. The last
category includes Barbara Olson, the wife of the Solicitor General, who
spoke to her husband from the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania just
before the crash, and Gordon Sinclair, a Canadian who had written an
appreciative piece about his American neighbors that has been
circulating on the Internet for some time, but gained new life after
this recent event. I also
included Cantor Fitzgerald in that group. This is the firm from the top of one of the Towers who lost
seventy percent of its personnel in the tragedy.
The
groupings are arbitrary, of course, and had to
be further adjusted to make assumptions about what specific search terms
should be included. Easy
choices were available in the case of Osama bin Laden, as there were
many variations on the spelling of his name, but it was always clear
what the searcher was interested in.
Nostradamus was slightly more arbitrary, as I also
included searches for predictions and prophecies as related
terms. Nostradamus was a
French physician and astrologer who lived from 1503 to 1566 and dabbled
in prophecy. His volume Centuries, a big set of vague and sometimes
cataclysmic predictions set in rhyme, made quite a hit in his day.
His name comes up often in relation to cataclysmic events that someone
wants to tell us we should have foreseen. Because of a hoax going around
the Internet indicating that Nostradamus had predicted the event, there
was a lot of interest in his name. The hoax has been covered on several sites, including: http://www.stiller.com/wtc.htm.
In the case of
maps and airlines, I thought I saw a
surge in interest and included that category for that reason. Obviously, there are almost always searches for these items
on the net, but it did seem to me that there was a more lively interest
than usual. I think my
findings tend to bear this out.
The category for gas, anthrax, & cipro
was not a part of the first days data that I analyzed, but I added the
category later as it soon became apparent that it told us something more
about what people were interested in.
On to the data
Below is the chart I prepared to
summarize my
findings:
The
first set of bars on the chart reflects the percentage that the top 300
searches made up of the total searches for the day. The size of the bar for September 15 tells me that there was
considerably more focus on specific topics for that day than is normal.
This is consistent with what I would expect to find, and I would
assume that the pattern also held true for other days around that time
for which I dont have the data. A week later, the percentage that the top 300 searches makes up
of the total searches for the day seems to stabilize.
The last bar in the group reflects the
percentages
for the most recent 60 day period and only provide the top 200
terms. As a percentage of total searches, this seems consistent with the
sizes of the bars in the first grouping. The maps & airlines group appears to have
returned to a
normal level of interest. Interest
in Osama and in the targets has been more sustained than I might have
predicted, and I am surprised to see the level of long term interest in Nostradamus. Keep in mind
that these percentages are not directly comparable, as they are not on
the same base as the other bars, but are percentages of only the top 200
searches for the 60 day period.
Concerning the last group, gas, anthrax, cipro,
I assume that the interest has been too recent to have had a major
impact on the 60 day results so far. Because of the nature of the threat and the reporting, I would
expect that group of terms to have a longer shelf life than other
groups.
The
total activity over the time period I observed increased
substantially.
On the 15th, there were 5,581,719 searches tabulated. By the 13th of the following month, that number had
grown to 6,218,177 searches, for a growth rate of 11.4 percent in one
month. This is a huge rate
of growth, but is indicative of what the Internet promises to become in
the years ahead.
Patterns in the data
In reviewing the graphs, several points stand out
to me. First is the huge
amount of interest in and focus on Osama bin Laden and on terror and the
Taliban. I am also
intrigued by the interest in Nostradamus. As I would expect, that interest has subsided dramatically.
I am a little more surprised that the interest in Osama and the
Taliban has dropped in the same way, although not to the same extent.
The search pattern for
specific people is instructive, in that it shows people responding to
names in the news for
which they want more information, but whose instant celebrity is
directly related to the events of the day and do not have the same
staying power.
The patterns for maps & airlines and for
specific targets is also interesting. Interest in
these areas has definitely increased over what appeared on the
15th, and seems to have been sustained. A continued
interest in current events might explain the interest in maps,
but it is not as clear why interest would remain so high in the specific
targets of the attack.
Conclusions
I heard a report on National Public Radio while
driving in which the interviewee made the point that the Internet is
becoming the preferred source for news content because it provides
content on demand. Certainly
people turn to television for images, and radio provides
immediacy and a
convenience that the Internet cannot match, but when people want more
in-depth information about any topic, they are turning more and more to
the Internet. These statistics bear out that observation.
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