[Taxacom] Google Trends, MarkMail, etc.

[Meredith Anne Lane]

 Hi, Taxacom-ers....

Just taking a look at Google Trends re biodiversity, taxonomy and the like,
and sensing the typical taxonomist's (depressed and depressing) reaction to
the apparent downward trends, I investigated a little further because just
demonstrating that there are upward curves toward the right for other topics
is not sufficient, seems to me, to conclude that the world is going
completely toward "in silico, in vivo be da...ed".

Firstly, there is no absolute scale of any sort on the Y axis at Google
Trends, and no statistical testing of any sort to indicate any sort of level
of confidence in the appearance of the graph.

Secondly, single terms are rarely in themselves bellwethers for a whole
discipline. Try, for instance, "biological diversity" instead of
"biodiversity" on GoogleTrends.  Had a look at "phylogeny"? Try
"evolution".  There is no clear pattern of downward slide across these terms
taken together.

Thirdly, note the beginning date for Google Trends (2004), and, then, look
up the history of Google (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Google):
"At its peak in early 2004, Google handled upwards of 84.7 percent of all
search requests on the World Wide Web through its partnerships with other
Internet clients like Yahoo!, AOL and CNN.  In February 2004, Yahoo! dropped
its partnership with Google, providing an independent search engine of its
own. This cost Google some market share ...".   And, I bet, some search
hits.  If you looked at the same graph (still missing any  sort of scale on
the Y axis) while covering up 2004, would things still look quite so
downward to you?

Finally, general search engines carried nearly the whole searching load for
a while there, but gradually, specialized ones have come online -- and
people now have large files of bookmarks stored in their browsers.  If I
want to know something about "biodiversity" these days, I go to my own list
of bookmarked sites rather than to a general search on Google.  In fact,
GBIF's own prototype Data Portal was launched in February of 2004...it took
a while for usage to grow, but is it not possible that people who once
searched Google and got directed to GBIF by Google would have bookmarked
GBIF and thus pulled the "biodiversity" trend on Google "downward"?

This last is likely a continuing trend -- between 5 Feb and 22 May 2008,
real visits (people, not crawlers) per day to GBIF's data portal have
increased from around 3000 to over 5000. Over that time period, the portal
received 383,808 real visits, and of these, 83.2% were referred by Google.
During that same time, 27% of GBIF Data Portal's visitors were return visits
to the site, meaning that approximately 17% of these return visitors were
coming to GBIF by some route *other* than Google.

My point here, really, is to say two things:  Taxonomists apparently tend to
be pessimistic (and let their pessimism affect their scientific objectivity
adversely). Pessimism can all too often be a self-fulfilling prophecy (even
when there is no real evidence to support the pessimistic view).

If after this you still need a pick-me-up, go look up your own name on the
Taxacom index in MarkMail. Those numbers (of Taxacom posts) are almost all
looking up!

-- 
Meredith A. Lane

MeredithALane at gmail.com