Google Zeitgeist - Database of Intentions

Google Zeitgeist is an amazing application provided by Google which provides an indication of what a particular country or culture is looking for on internet. Jhon Battelle in his book "The Search" calls Google a massive "database of intentions". The reason is that as our society goes more and more digital and as we start spending more and more time online on internet, we use search to find anything we are looking for. For a whole generation of young people, search or lets say Google has become synonymous with internet. Evey given moment, millions of people are using Google to key in their desires, wants and fears in form of search queries in simple text box against white background. A simple look at Zeitgiest results for a country can tell us what people there are looking for giving an insight into trends and needs of society.

Here is a look at 5 most popular things searched by India in month of January:

1. Indian Railways
2. Cricket
3. wikipedia
4. sania mirza
5. flowers

Surprisingly Indian railways is top indian queries for most of months in 2006. Does it mean that most people in India uses Internet to look for railway times or book rail tickets online!!And this is what our neighbour pakistan was looking for in month of January:

1. pakistan
2. sania mirza
3. atif aslam
4. kareena kapoor
5. katrina kaif

It is interesting that 3 out of 5 top queires in Pakistan are looking for indians. In month of December 2006 , this is what pakistan was searching for:

1. pakistan
2. aishwarya
3. sania mirza
4. kareena kapoor
5. katrina kaif

In top 15 of searches done in Pakistan, 7 of them are for indian actors or bollywood. So we know how much besotted our neighbour is with bollywood and actors.