Take Josh Hamilton, for instance. The Texas Ranger, who is also a previous American League MVP award winner, has struggled with substance addiction for some time now. He famously fell off his sobriety wagon in grand style, thanks to the “we don’t care who we offend” style of Deadspin. A little under three years since Hamilton’s last relapse, reports are the Rangers slugger has once again fallen off the wagon.

Thankfully, we’re spared from another embarrassing photo gallery — one that was sent to various publications without the consent of Hamilton, mind you — however, Hamilton’s latest bout with alcohol has once again places him at the forefront of today’s Internet trends. Man, can’t a guy have a drink in peace without it becoming a nationwide trend?

The “nationwide” is not hyperbole. As of this writing, Hamilton’s latest fall from sobriety is the top trend on Google and an incredible popular trend on Twitter. As an example, there have been over 400 responses to the Josh Hamilton Twitter trend since that particular tab was opened in preparation for this article. As you can see in the upcoming screenshot, Hamilton’s relapse exploded across Google Search as well:

It should be noted that, by and large, the Twitter reaction towards Hamilton was one of support:

But there are always those who try to be witty:

Professional athletes and Internet trends. Two great tastes that taste great together.

Google described it as an experimental tool enabling the user to find queries with a similar pattern to a target data series.

Users can upload data sets (by state or time series, and Google Correlate will compute the “Pearson Correlation Coefficient” between your time series and the frequency time series for every query in its database.

Previously only available in the U.S., Google announced today that the service is being extended into 49 new countries.

“Since our initial launch, we’ve graduated to Google Trends and we’ve seen a number of great applications of Correlate in several domains, including economics (consumer spending, unemployment rate and housing inventory), sociology and meteorology,” says Google software engineer Matt Mohebbi. “The correspondence of gas prices and search activity for fuel efficient cars was even briefly discussed in a Fox News presidential debate and NPR recently covered correlations related to political commentators.”

“Health has always been an area of particular interest to our team (Matt Mohebbi, Julia Kodysh, Rob Schonberger and Dan Vanderkam),” says Mohebbi. “Correlate was inspired by Google Flu Trends and many of us worked on both systems. So we were very excited when the BioSense division at the CDC published a page which shows correlations between some of their national trends in patient diagnosis activity and Google search activity. With just three years of weekly data, relevant search terms are surfaced. For example, the time series for bloody nose surfaces ‘bloody snot’ and ‘blood in snot’.”

“While these terms shouldn’t come as a surprise, there are others which are more interesting, including searches related to static electricity, dry skin, and red cheeks,” says Mohebbi. “Of course, correlation is not causation but we hope that Correlate can be used as a method for researchers to generate new hypotheses with their data.”

For more on Google Correlate, check out this FAQ page.

During a question about job creation, the former New Mexico Governor delivered this zinger that might be the first poop joke to grace the stages of a debate in some time:

“My neighbor’s two dogs have created more shovel-ready projects than this President.”

Whether you agree with former Gov. Johnson’s assessment of the President’s performance or not, you have to admit that it was a pretty good line for a format usually bereft of any comic relief.

Here’s a clip of the joke -

This was Johnson’s first GOP debate this season as a candidate, and in a crowded field he is definitely fighting an uphill battle. But if you want to make a name for yourself quickly, it doesn’t hurt to become a highly searched topic on Google. And that’s just what Johnson has done – propelled himself into the number one search spot on Google all day today.

What’s even funnier is that he gave himself some love for his all-day trending on Twitter -

That linked to a Facebook photo of his name atop the trending list:

On a side note, Google trends is often times a place where you’ll see things that have no place together – like Gary Johnson, Cedric Benson and Frances Bean Cobain.

Apparently, there was a little controversy regarding Johnson’s joke from last night. As soon as he said it, some remembered that Rush Limbaugh had used a similar joke on his radio program. Johnson gave him a Twitter shoutout for the idea -

According to the Huffington Post, Johnson said that a former writer for “The Tonight Show” gave him a bunch of one-liners for the debate – the dog poop joke being one of them. Johnson said he didn’t know that the joke had been used before.

Players like Jason Witten of the Dallas Cowboys and Takeo Spikes, who honestly looks like he could double as a Terminator. The video is just another example of the long line of social media interaction NFL Players turned to during the lockout and its resolution. While it should be noted the players are not the ones who held the nation hostage — the owners are solely responsible for the lockout taking place — at least they understand just how valuable fans are to the success of the game.

Without full stadiums and even more people watching at home, those billions of dollars both sides were fighting over wouldn’t be nearly as much. Again, this is just another example of how effective social media can be from a public relations point of view. Sure, there were obviously some production dollars spent developing the 2:22 video, but this method is much easier than individual and/or group press conferences that require a number of players to be in the same place at the same time. The YouTube method, to put it simply, much simpler in terms of logistics.

The NFLPA’s Twitter announced the video’s launch, and there’s a link to the ProPlayerInsiders blog which offers more details about the video:

The blog entry, another example of the social media engagement, has a list of all the players who contributed, which follows:

Indianapolis Colts linebacker Gary Brackett, Atlanta Falcons linebacker Coy Wire, St. Louis Rams offensive tackle Adam Goldberg, New Orleans Saints offensive tackle Jon Stinchcomb, Chicago Bears kicker Robbie Gould, Buffalo Bills safety George Wilson, Detroit Lions safety Erik Coleman and free agent offensive tackle Tyson Clabo.

There’s also nods to the aforementioned Spikes, as well as Maurice Stovall of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Rashean Mathis of the Jacksonville Jaguars, and Andrew Whitworth of the Cincinnati Bengals. Another sure sign that football is indeed back, besides the glut of social media content, comes from Google Trends. Currently, it’s pretty much all football teams as fans are clearly rushing to Google in order to see what their favorite team is doing.

Each phrase is either about bin Laden himself, his affiliations, his reign of terror, those who brought him to justice, related geography, or publications covering the event. Here is the list (U.S.) as of the time of this writing:

1. osama bin laden dead
2. islamabad
3. navy seals
4. al qaeda
5. 9/11
6. ground zero
7. president obama
8. al jazeera
9. new york times
10. twin towers
11. usa today
12. pakistan news
13. benazir bhutto
14. 9 11
15 nytimes
16. washington post
17. nyt
18. infowars
19. taliban
20. cia

I can’t say for sure that this is the first time this has happened, but I’ve never witnessed such a domination of Google Trends by one topic. It’s fascinating to see how Google has progressed in terms of its ability to deliver information in the time between the 9/11 attacks and the news of bin Laden’s death. Danny Sullivan has a great piece looking at this progression, providing a screenshot of what Google.com looked like on the day of the attacks. it came accompanied with the following message:

“If you are looking for news, you will find the most current information on TV or radio. Many online news services are not available, because of extremely high demand. Below are links to cached copies of news sites as they appeared earlier today. ”

It then provided a couple links to the Washington Post and CNN.com (cached). Things are obviously a bit different now. For one, we have Google News, Google Trends, and realtime search.

Social media has come a long way since then (remember back when this was not a well-known term?). Let’s not downplay the roles of services like Facebook and Twitter in the spreading of the news. Last night, in the time leading up to Obama’s announcement, many read about the news from an unlimited number of sources on Twitter and found insights both from strangers and from those whose voices they trust. Matt Rosoff at Business Insider says Twitter had its “CNN moment“.

Just about everyone in my Facebook News feed was talking about it as well. I can only assume that most users had similar experiences.

One fascinating element of social media’s role was made crystal clear, when a man unknowingly live tweeted the raid on bin Laden.

The whole thing simply shows how far the web has come as an information source in the last decade, particularly with the emergence of user-generated content and the realtime web.

Original Article: Yesterday, we reported that the U.S. Hot Topics section of Google Trends appeared to be stuck on the same ten for several days. As of Monday, the top ten hot topics were:

1. kelly clarkson
2. radio
3. beck
4. shutdown
5. boehner
6. shooting
7. masters
8. garcia
9. kyrie irving
10. anonymous

Normally, these change frequently throughout the day, and as we noted, it seemed like “shutdown” would have been gone from the list, considering the government shutdown had already been averted.

It soon became apparent that we were not the only ones that were seeing a lack of updating here. We reached out to Google for comment. A spokesperson told us they’d look into it for us, but we’ve yet to receive an explanation.

Earlier today, it seemed to be fixed, as a new set of keywords were being displayed, related to timely events. However, now it appears to just be gone entirely. Instead of the top ten hot topics in the left column and the top ten hot searches in the right, there is just the top five hot searches in the left column and six through ten on the right (as pictured).

Also missing is the search box for searching hot topics.

It’s unclear whether this is how Google Trends will be from now on, or if his is only temporary. We’ll update when we receive word from Google.

On a semi-related note, Twitter Trends are now available in 70 new locations.

1. kelly clarkson
2. radio
3. beck
4. shutdown
5. boehner
6. shooting
7. masters
8. garcia
9. kyrie irving
10. anonymous

Interestingly enough, they are the same as they were last week. Normally, they are updated frequently throughout the day, and it seems like “shutdown” would be unlikely to make the top ten now that the government shutdown in the U.S. has been averted.

The list has been checked from multiple locations by different people. All of those tested are seeing the same list. Let us know if you’re seeing an updated version.

The “Hot Searches” part of Google Trends appears to still be updated. It’s showing keywords as of 2 minutes ago at the time of this writing. Yet, Hot Topics remains unchanged.

Google has yet to respond to request for comment.

Do you find Google News to be too heavily polluted? Share your thoughts.

He found a blatant example when the term "chocomize" became listed as "volcanic" on Google Trends. When clicking for the results, he found several sites serving Google ads that presumably only created posts about the term because it was trending (as a way to get some easy traffic, and potentially ad clicks). In fact, some examples came from sites that were clearly aimed at entirely different niches, such as a horror movies site and a TV/Anime site. The biggest problem from the user’s perspective is that there was nothing immediately indicating why the term was trending.

The real reason the term was trending was apparently because CNN ran a story earlier in the day about a company called Chocomize that makes custom candy bars (a pretty cool concept, I have to say), but when looking at the Google News results, Sullivan had to really dig to find that story.

"The pollution within Google News is ridiculous," Sullivan says. "This is Google, where we’re supposed to have the gold standard of search quality. Instead, we get ‘news’ sites that have been admitted — after meeting specific editorial criteria — just jumping on the Google Trends bandwagon, outranking the actual article causing the term ‘chocomize’ to be popular, polluting the news results and along the way, earning Google some cash."

Earning Google some cash indeed. There is no doubt that this goes on all the time, specifically with AdSense sites. Interestingly, in a story grouped with Sullivan’s on TechMeme, the Wall Street Journal has some words from Eric Schmidt talking about Google’s famous "one trick pony". Schmidt is quoted as saying, "But if you’ve got a one-trick pony, you want the one we have. We’re in the ad business, and it’s growing rapidly. We picked the right trick." The piece goes on to talk about how that trick is going to pay off greatly in the mobile space as well, as more and more people gravitate to the Android operating system.

Schmidt has said in the past, as Sullivan reminds us, that the Internet is a cesspool (referring to an excess of useless content). So, to be fair, Schmidt doesn’t come across as being very enthusiastic about the sites that take advantage of Google Trends to game Google News. Still, there is money to be made, and if sites meet the criteria of what it takes to get into Google News, there’s a fine line Google has to walk, regardless.

Can it all be so simple?

Sullivan says, “It shouldn’t be that hard for Google to police what shows up in response to what it publishes on Google Trends. Spam sites ought to be nabbed. AdSense sites ought to be shut down. News publishers abusing the very lucky position they have of being in Google News, by routinely tapping into Google Trends topics that aren’t relevant to their publications, should get the boot.”

While I greatly respect Sullivan, and value his analysis and opinions, I’m not sure it’s as simple as that. We’ve all seen how the mainstream media sites turn to blogs to get their stories (sometimes without giving credit or links), just as the sites in question appear to have done with CNN. We spoke with Sullivan about this not too long ago after he became a victim of such a scenario.

It’s hard to say that just because you use Google ads, you should be penalized. That’s not to say there isn’t an issue, but while there may be plenty of “garbage sites” there are some pretty highly respected publications that serve ads by Google. The horror movie blog pointed to, does appear to generally offer horror movie related news (while crediting sources), based on a quick glance of its most recent content.  But if the Chocomize story on that blog doesn’t credit its source, that is a problem. Maybe this is a “garbage” site, maybe it’s not. From Google’s standpoint, determining that can’t be easy in all cases.

Looking beyond the credit issue for a moment, when it comes to topic-spam, who’s to say what a publication would find of interest to its audience? I’m not sure that I agree that a blog mainly focused on horror movies, for example, should not be able to blog about chocolate or another off-topic subject every now and then. That’s up to the publication and whether they want to risk alienating their own audience, if you ask me. Again, I’m not saying Sullivan is wrong about this particular site’s practices. I’m just looking at the bigger picture.

Maybe Google could do more to look at story sources, but that’s got to be a difficult task across all publications, and there would no doubt be plenty of room for debate between publications about who broke a story first.

I’m not saying this is what happened either, but hypothetically, what if the horror movies blog actually talked to the Chocomize people first and had the story first, and CNN just happened to find it and find it newsworthy themselves, and do their own piece. Now, that’s an unlikely scenario in this particular example, but it’s not outside of the realm of possibility in other examples, such as the one Sullivan experienced recently himself.

Regardless of that even, it’s hard to say "you can’t have content about this topic because we posted it as a trending topic."

There is clearly a problem with Google Trends. Sullivan is right in that the result doesn’t help explain why the topic was trending. He’s also right in that the original source (CNN) should be more visible. However, cleaning up the "pollution" might not be such an easy problem to conquer. It’s hard to say if Google is allowing such pollution to go on so it can make more money or if the problem is just too difficult for the search giant. It could be a combination of the two.

What do you think? Comment here.

The World Cup’s 30 days of soccer began on Friday, and there will no doubt be plenty more related searching in the coming weeks. Google Consumer Operations Strategist Jaime Forman-Lau says:

It’s often said that football is a global sport, and that’s certainly true in search. Searches for [world cup 2010], [copa mundial] and [?? ?] are all spiking, although overall World Cup buzz seems to be off to a slower start in 2010 than in the months leading up to the 2006 tournament, based on global trends for queries like [world cup] and [fifa world cup]. India is the #1 country searching for [fifa world cup schedule], [fifa 2010 schedule] and similar queries. And as the match-up between anglophone rivals England and USA approaches, searches for [england world cup] continue to far surpass interest in [usa world cup].

Most of us will be watching the matches on TV in pubs and living rooms, but a few lucky spectators will get to watch in person in South Africa. Searches for [world cup tickets] peaked in mid-April, and have since declined. But whether home or abroad, we’re all searching for the best way to show support for our team. Searches for [world cup decoration] have risen, and a glimpse at the Dutch shows queries for [oranje versiering] (“orange decoration”; orange is the Netherland’s national color) and [orange] have risen sharply for the last three months, as they have in 2006 and 2008 for the World Cup and European Cup.

Insights for Search shows a great level of interest in Cristiano Ronaldo and some other stars of the sport:

These are the players provided in Google’s own Insights for Search presentation. As I am not a soccer guy (I’m more of a fan of the other football), I can’t get too specific, but if you want to check out search activity on any other players, you can do so using the tool yourself. I’m sure there will be plenty of them showing up on Google Trends as well (not to mention Twitter).

The Popular Images feature comes in the form of a link just under the search box on the Google Image Search page. When clicked, it brings up a categorized list of image searches and corresponding images.

"We have organized popular images across a few categories like Movies, Sports, Cars & Bikes, Music, and Cartoons," says Google’s Mobile Engineering team in a blog post on the Google Mobile blog.  "You can click on individual categories to see related images corresponding to what’s popular on Google Image Search."

The queries are categorized automatically with an algorithm, which Google says will continue to improve over time. There is a "Trends" category that shows image queries based on Google Trends.

The feature is only available in the U.S. at this point. There is no word on when this will expand to other countries.

Related Articles:

> Google Puts More Images (And One Big Pic) On Results Pages

> Google Experiments with a New Image Search Feature

> Google "Similar Images" Feature Goes From Labs to Actual Feature