Google Trends

May 12, 2006

Everyone’s blogging about the new Google Trends tool which enables you to see popularity of search terms over time. While you don’t see the actual numbers of queries, it’s helpful to see patterns, or compare search terms on a relative scale.

Two plots of specific interest to me:

Google Trends Plots

Fascinating to note that in May 2004, MovableType 3.0 was released, along with licensing for the first time which is almost precisely when WordPress became a more popular search phrase than MovableType. Ever since, MovableType has been on a downward trend while WordPress has taken off. I hardly design any blogs these days in MovableType.

I started using Drupal and using it on various sites at the start of 2005, when interest sharly peaked. It’s a great tool if you’re looking for more than a blog to manage your content.

http://www.hagrin.com/index.php Hagrin

If I remember correctly, wasn’t Drupal’s increase due to them asking for funding because their server melted down and Slashdot picked up the story?

I remember using Drupal before the peak, but only really hearing about it in the mainstream when they asked for funding.
http://www.qwertyrash.com/ Chris Howard

Rachel

What’s interesting is if you include “blogger” in there. Although “blogger” is a broader term than just meaning the Blogger blogging service, WordPress still manages to catch up in 2006.

In fact, their graphs this year have been almost synchronized, which would/could suggest WordPress has become synonymous with blogging.
http://dendroica.blogspot.com/ John

“blogspot” and “wordpress” track together very closely from about 2004 to the present.
http://www.cre8d-design.com/blog/ Rachel

Thanks Chris – I actually tried having blogger in there initially but thought there were too many other possible meanings – but interesting that, as you note, WP catches up.
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http://nizhongmin.com Richie

Yeah,Wordpress is the most popular platform!
http://www.kelake.org Clark

Typepad has grown steadily during that time. It’s only natural that WordPress would grow in popularity (if that what the search results indicate) since the install process is far easier than MT.
http://ohad-news.blogspot.com Ohad

Rachel,
thanks for the nice idea to comapre bloggin platforms by using google’s trends. I am now in the process of moving my blog http://ohad-news.blogspot.com from blogger to a hosting provider and was not sure which publishing platform to choose. I think I might choose wordpress and go with the masses
http://jamdo.com Rob

From an individual blogger’s point of view, WP has to be the best and it’s certainly getting lot’s of attention as reflected in that graph.

I am starting to experiment with Drupal though and so far it is pretty good.
http://www.hallomarkus.de HalloMarkus

Hi, thanks for showing what one can do with this new feature. I did another selection:

I took wordpress, drupal, mambo, joomla, serendipity.
http://www.google.com/trends?q=wordpress%2Cdrupal%2Cmambo%2Cjoomla%2Cserendipity&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all

As one can see everything is relative… Mambo lost a lot and wordpress and joomla gained.

My favorite is http://www.geeklog.net and that is even more relative.
http://www.hackernotcracker.com hacker not cracker

Towards the end of last year, I converted all of my blogs from MovableType to WordPress. I have never looked back.
http://blogs.caseysoftware.com Keith Casey

I’ve been using Drupal for a number of sites for almost two years…. including a trio of group blogs. If you’re *just* looking for a blog, it’s a bit of overkill, but since most people who stick with blogging for a while tend to go past that and get into other things, it’s a great platform for doing all kinds of things.

My most used modules are spam, scheduler, service_links (adds digg, reddit, etc), and the various aggregators.
http://elliottback.com/wp/ Elliott Back

Drupal is (to me) a major piece of complex and pain in the ass software. WordPress just makes more sense. But, getting WordPress out of the “blog” idea and into a CMS is nearly impossible, and that’s where Drupal is useful.
http://jamdo.com Rob

I certainly agree that Drupal is overkill for a normal blog, but as you say if you want to start expanding things, it’s pretty good.
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Google Trends

Hi, I'm Rachel Cunliffe!

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