Google has launched a site that allows you to do searches on keywords for graphs of their usage, as well as the top cities, regions, and languages involved. This is the right way to expose this kind of data. This type of statistical data is useful, but does not infringe in anyone privacy. This will be useful for trend spotting and interest gauging.

Strangely, there seem to be some strange things missing. For instance, take these two Google queries: "aol search database" and "quicksilver mac". For both, MemeStreams has similar result ranking on Google, either second or third term. I can pull up trend data for "quicksilver mac", but not "aol search database", even though queries for the AOL database are about 5 times more prevalent.

This could just be because the AOL related searches are more current.. However, that's the situation where this might be most useful. I would very much like to be able to gauge interest level associated with issues over the first week or two of their inception. That would be _very_ useful, especially considering that links are provided to news stories that include the term.

Google needs to turn the knob up to 11 on this one. Anything that sends a few dozen referrals to sites from unique users should get included in this.

Google Trends