Fun with Top Search Terms...and Ryan White

As you probably know by now, many bloggers choose their topic of discussion by checking to see what search terms are currently hot. Here's an experiment you can try with some of your friends and/or coworkers, to see if the system works in reverse.

First: I'm not sure if a single person doing 10 identical searches counts as 1 or 10, so we'll have to do some trials.

Okay, now pick a ridiculous topic, one that's not likely to come up normally. Something like "polka dotted leprechauns". Now coordinate with friends and coworkers to type the term into the Google search box at a specified time, and keep doing searches for the same term for, say 15 minutes or so.

Now go to www.Google.com/Trends and wait for the next update. See if your term shows up in the top 100, then check out how many blog entries suddenly appear about Polka Dotted Leprechauns.

If done correctly and over a long enough time, one might even be able to get tv producers to come out with some pretty absurd stuff (more so than usual) as they try to stay on top of the trends.

For all you college students who were wondering what to do over the holidays for fun and sport...You have your marching orders. If you actually schedule a search, post it to comments.

(in case you were wondering "Ryan White" was the number one search term at the time of this post)