Google trends - Inverness are top FOI searchers

The new Google Trends service can be fun to play around with, I've been looking at a few FOI related searches. Essentially Google trends allows you to access the rich data Google hold on what searches are made and when and where from(when they can track IP user data). You can also compare two terms side by side. The graphs also plot news stories over time against the graph. The service has great value for those planning to optimise sites for search engines and adwords etc.

A search for Freedom of Information Act focused on the UK, shows that the top UK city that searched for the term as Inverness, Liverpool is 6th (I wonder how many of those searches I'm responsible for!). You can also see the interest in the term over time and the spike in interest early in 2005 and fairly constant level of use since. Also, more people search for data protection act than freedom of information act.

I've created some searches as links below:

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Freedom of Information Act (UK)

-Freedom of Information Act versus Data Protection Act (UK)

-Information Commissioner (UK)

-FOIA (worldwide)

-Open Government (Worldwide)

-Tony Blair versus Gordon Brown

Read about the service and how accurate the data is likely to be.

Post any others in the comments below