Yahoo! Hacks

Spot Trends with Yahoo! Buzz

Find out which pop culture phenomenon is on the way in or out by looking at trends in search queries.

Everywhere we look in the media, there are lists of bestsellers that can tell us what’s hot at the moment. People watch the top-grossing movies like they’d watch the stock market, and best-selling books are always a topic of conversation. Yahoo! has its own way of tracking what’s hot: by looking at the most common phrases people search for. If Yahoo! users are suddenly searching for singer Gwen Stefani more often than for Britney Spears, that shows a shift in interest or popularity.

Determining Current Leaders and Movers

Yahoo! tracks exactly these kinds of trends at the Yahoo! Buzz Index (http://buzz.yahoo.com). When you browse the Buzz Index, you’ll find several Top Movers Charts, separated into categories such as TV, Music, Sports, Movies, Actors, Video Games, and overall queries. Each chart has the top 15 search queries with the greatest percentage increase for that particular day. These charts are a quick snapshot of which queries are gaining the most ground.

At the bottom of each chart, you’ll find a “View complete chart…” link, which you can click to compare the top Movers with the Leaders. Instead of tracking the greatest change in terms of percentage, the Leaders chart shows you the top search queries for that category. Figure 1-45 shows the Leaders and Movers lists, side by side. The current champs (Leaders) are on the left, and the challengers ...