Big events that affect many people have always caused a sudden rush for information. Historically people used their town hall’s, churches etc which were later replaced with radio sets and, more recently, television.
So what happens today? Not surprisingly people are searching online for their answers, whether through traditional search engines or through their social media channels. What is unique about this is the fact that we can actually take a glimpse into the fears, interests and curiosity of the population when a global event happens now due to the fact that our searches are recorded.
I made a wordle below based on the words people have recently been using when searching for ‘volcano’ online in the UK. The larger the word appears the more times people have searched for it and so from looking at the words relative sizes we can gauge what people most wanted to know when seeking information on this weeks volcanic activities – giving us a glimpse into the UK’s subconsciousness.
Not surprisingly, people were looking for Iceland, eruption, ash etc but take a while to look at some of the slightly smaller words used…
These are all interesting indicators of what people want when we publish information about major world events. Images, satellite,webcam,live! etc and should inform the content and keywords that we use to make our content relevant to users.
I personally find the individual web searches interesting too. Among my favourites are:
safest place to live away from iceland volcano eruption
youtube volcano essex
And the best one by far…
would like the volcano to stop erupting now please
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Johnny Cullen
April 22, 2010
Excellent post. It’s always interesting to see what people actually search for. Organisations are often shocked that clients and customers don’t use industry jargon or technical terms in their searches.
PS I’d love to see what airline owners are googling now. “Make the eejits swim home” would probably be near the top though!