About.com launched 20 years ago. While they predate Google’s Pagerank, they show up as a top source for about 30% of all questions asked on Google in the U.S. That gives them a unique view at what America is concerned about. Dr. Jon Roberts, the Chief Innovation Officer at about.com, believes he is able to see the heartbeat of the nation, in the way we ask questions. He broke it down at this year’s South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive festival.
“Studying the data underpinning the Internet is as weird and fascinating as studying the universe.”, says Roberts. He worked to condense massive amounts of data, from over 35 Million posts, to some simple data visualization. In doing so, About.com was able to learn some interesting things from the deep to the … well… not so deep.
If you can boil massive amounts of data to a single slide, you are on your way to starting to understand it #iheartdata #SXSW
— Carl Bliss (@ckbliss) March 11, 2017
“We can not only gauge interest, we can identify the cause of the interest”
As they study the data from 20 years of web activity, they have been able to find some predictable trends. For instance, America has little interest in personal health around Christmas every year. But searches for health related topics are at a peak every January.
Where those patterns diverge, are where we can see some interesting things going on.
Make a stable prediction, then you can see when the world is changing.
- Immediately after September 11, 2001 there was a predictable 300% rise in interest in “Islam”. But there was also a 300% increase in searches related to “weight loss”. Apparently a “fight or flight” mechanism kicked in nation wide.
- In October 2008, after the banking crisis, searches for “Budget Recipes” increased. They sustained that level of interest until 2015. Even though we were told the crisis was over, their data show that America didn’t believe it yet.
- After the election on November 9, 2016 health related topics dropped by 40% for the next 3 days. This is similar to what they see after the Super Bowl. America had a “collective hangover”.
- After the election, About.com saw millennial females from left-leaning cities searching for terms like “How do you impeach a president”. By January 21, those same women were in the streets. About saw the trends before the world.
Interesting insight: while financial crisis recovery started in 2009, budget recipe interest didn't decline until 2015. #SXSW #iHeartData
— Illuminated Dev (@IlluminatedDev) March 11, 2017
"Every day we know whether the country is behaving as expected," says Dr. Jon Roberts. #iHeartData #sxsw pic.twitter.com/H7WSACxS3u
— Thomas Zorbach (@vmpeople) March 11, 2017
Follow up posts:
What about.com can teach us about millennials
Context: the key to personalization