I don’t know why but I enjoy looking at Google’s search trends. I guess it’s the geek in me. But it does give us a sense of what we find interesting or important as a online society. Sometimes, the Hot Trends page kinda scares me.
Anyways, I did a simple search on the term "baseball" for the year 2007. This was what I got:
The result was pretty predictable. There was a slight bump in April at the beginning of the year when fans are gearing up for the season. The spike in early July can certainly be attributed to the All-Star game. Folks, are trying to find the All-Star ballot is my guess.
There is a small hill around post-season time but not as much as I would have thought.
Then I did a comparison between "White Sox" (in blue) and "Cubs" (in red) again for the year 2007.
With the year the Cubs had (and quite frankly, the year the Sox had, too), it’s no surprise that online folks were searching for the Cubs. It doesn’t hurt that the Cubs can be seen nationwide on WGN either, I suppose.
You can see the big spike at the close of the season when the Cubs clinched the playoff spot (and right before they blew it against the Dbacks). Yet, except for that, the Sox pretty much go toe to toe with them in the Google News searches for the year.
I don’t consider this a scientific study by any means but it is a scratch on surface. If you’re interested in playing around with Google Trends, have at it. It gives you a lot more information like regional data as well as attempting to match spikes with news events.