Is there a way to visualize people’s innermost thoughts? Google Suggest lets you see what others are asking when they search the web. From the existential to the mundane, the questions form a portrait of human curiosity. (Read our article in the New York Times, or try it live now.)
Take the phrase “Why doesn’t he…” To make it easy to see Google’s suggestions, we’ve created a diagram where the size of arrows and words show how many pages on the web answer each question. (In these diagrams, the arrow thicknesses show the number of web pages for each question.) |
| Even more revealing is the comparison between what he doesn’t do, and what she doesn’t. Our diagram puts the two lists side by side. |
| Family issues run deep, and sex differences loom large: |
| Sometimes the result is simply sad. |
The diagrams above show that if there’s one common question for the famous, it’s not about money or cosmetic surgery. It’s whether they’re Jewish.
Some questions are metaphysical:
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| Sometimes questions can be philosophical, with an edge: |
| What about practical advice? |
| (For all we know, a dozen hedge funds are using Google to play the market.) |
| Finally, what does Google say about politics? Well, some of us are confused: |
| But there is a bipartisan consensus on one thing: The other side is wrong. |
Give it a spin! |
13 comments
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Atul Arora, Ross . Ross said: Visualizing juxtaposed queries RT @atul: The Web Seer — Visual Hint http://bit.ly/4orKan [...]
These would be easier to share if we could grab a URL for ones we like.
This is endless fun. Thanks!
Fascinating, thank you!
Looking forward to reading your blog.
I have to admit that, at times, I have also asked the google oracle random questions. This is really fun information - a great story - thanks!
I have wanted this for a long time, but never had time/skill to make it. Can you also add the # of hits for each? I do notice that the lines are thicker for the top results - can you quantify those?
This is my kind of fun. Husbands and wifes need to get off the paranoid stage and onto the open communication!
I was having fun with art questions. “Can Art Save Us”
@Matthew: Your wish is granted! The Web Seer now features bookmarkable URLs.
[...] chocolate…”, with the biggest arrows indicating most popular search results. See a description on their blog, their write-up in the New York Times, or play with the live Web Seer [...]
just found your site and I love it so much.
Really interesting website and visualizations. Looking forward to more from you.
Hi,
very interesting, congrats! Is there a way to localize these to languages other than english? (I tried with some italian results, but it doesn’t seem to work much)
Hi Leonaltro,
You’re right, it would be great to see the results in various languages! We don’t have that quite yet but we have a second version of the Web Seer that shows results in Portuguese: Web Seer Brazil
Best,
- fm
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