Google and Twitter trends data come to the UK

For a long time both Google and Twitter have provided information on the currently hot terms – those words people are using to search (Google) or in tweets (Twitter). The data has been global totals, which in practice means the data tells you what is currently hot with Americans, with the rest of the world only getting the occasional look in.

Both have however recently added geographic options.

Google is keeping their UK trends page relatively well hidden, but you can go to it directly at www.google.co.uk/trends, which shows the UK and US hot terms side by side. The benefit of being able to look at UK-only data is highlighted by this with, for example, at the time of writing “picket fences” and “oregon election results” featuring in the US trends but not in the UK ones.

Twitter also hides the new feature away somewhat, with the front page of its site displaying only the worldwide trends and without any option to change that. Log in to the Twitter site though and you can change from Worldwide to one of a number of different countries in the right-hand column where it says “Trending”.

Again the benefits of being able to switch the setting are shown, with only two terms in both the US and UK list. The results are a little rough around the edges, as with “Lankan President” appearing in the US list  – missing “Sri” at the front. The algorithm’s limitations are also shown up by the presence of “Jeremy” in the UK trending list, because in fact, the tweets behind that are about a range of different people called Jeremy – Kyle, Clarkson and others. Jeremy Kyle is by far the most common, but if the trending of Jeremy is really caused by all the tweets about him, having “Jeremy Kyle” appear in the list would be rather more meaningful.

Even so, being able to separate out the UK data is, as with Google, a very useful step forward for anyone wanting to keep an eye on what the general online buzz is from people in Britain.