[Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Board Elections

[Delphine Ménard]

On 9/19/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Try that one:
> > http://www.google.com/trends?q=wikipedia&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all
> >
> > Very different results aren't they?

> Different but largely useless unless you can find out how many search
> requests come from various areas. You also have the problem that you
> have no way of knowing which language people are looking at.

Errrr. Am I understanding it completely wrong when I read (on the
explanation from Google):
" When the Cities tab is selected, Google Trends first looks at a
sample of all Google searches to determine the cities from which we
received the most searches for your first term. "

"All Google searches". "Most searches". So unless you need exact
numbers, I think the trends are obvious. Wikipedia is not looked up
primarily in English speaking countries, but rather in non-English
speaking countries. Of course, one could argue that they're all
looking up the English Wikipedia. My little finger tells me they are
not, localized browsers tend to show results in their own language.

I am not saying that en is not the most visited, I know it is, I am
just saying that your conclusion which said:

"other than a brief appearance by de en dominates the search results"

was a quick and unfounded conclusion.

Delphine
-- 
~notafish