So getting back to content ...

This week our assignment in my Data Analytics class was to use Google Trends to uncover data on a topic and create an infographic describing our findings. We were put into groups and turned loose, with this as an example.

Basically what Google Trends does is show you popularity of search terms within a given timeframe/geography/category/Google site (Web search, image search, YouTube search, etc.). You can compare multiple search terms to see how they stack up against each other, popularity wise.

Though limited in what it will provide, data-wise (no hard numbers, just a scale from 1-100, 100 being most popular — I'm still not sure what that means?), it does give you a pretty cool snapshot of what's trending in search.

For example, today on Facebook, I see the trends are that horrible dentist who killed a lion, Windows 10 and a puppy with a ton of social media followers (my, we're a discerning bunch, aren't we?). If I plug those into Google Trends and look at popularity in Web searches for the past day, I see that Windows 10 is significantly more popular in Web searches than Cecil the lion or Tonkey the dog.

So, like I said, it can be useful, especially in relational values. You can also look at where geographically search terms are more popular, by country, state, metro, city, etc.

Anyway, the point of this blog is actually to show off, so let's get to it!

My teammate and I decided to research craft beer and its rise in popularity, then compare a couple craft beer brands (Dogfish Head, New Belgium) with a couple corporate brands (Coors, Anheuser-Busch).

We didn't find any real surprising results, except maybe that I expected craft beer brands to be more popular in coastal regions of the U.S., and it turns out that not only is "craft beer" as a search term more popular in four other countries than it is in the U.S., all four beer brands were most popular in the area where their headquarters are located.

tl;dr, check out the cool infographic I made!

When I worked in newspapers, I did a ton of graphic design, but since I've been at Waggener Edstrom, I haven't done nearly as much. It was fun to stretch my design muscles a bit. And I was surprised how quickly it all came back to me. 

So that's my little bit of content nerdery for you today. 

Oh, and this was me this morning:

Happy almost-Friday!