Saturday, April 25, 2009

-- Hmmm... --


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Google has a "trends" feature that allows you to check where, geographically, the most searches for a given word or phrase are emanating from. In checking "Ivory-billed Woodpecker" the following top 10 cities came up at this point in time:

1. Little Rock, AR, USA
2. Cincinnati, OH, USA
3. Denver, CO, USA
4. Minneapolis, MN, USA
5. Washington, DC, USA
6. Seattle, WA, USA
7. Atlanta, GA, USA
8. Philadelphia, PA, USA
9. Chicago, IL, USA
10. San Francisco, CA, USA

Not sure why Cincinnati would be #2 (Ohio has an active birdwatching contingent, but still seems a tad odd)???, and no cities from Florida, Louisiana, or South Carolina even crack the top 10.
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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Have there been any from Albany, NY ? I live in the pine bush preserve area and am all but certain I saw one of these 5 or 6 years ago. I distinctly recall 3 things about what I saw:
1- It was huge.
2- It made a sound I never heard before. (which is what drew my attn to it as it was flying by)

3- It had complete black around the eye. This I am 100% certain of.
*
Is there a waterbird that has red on it's head with black completely surrounding it's eye ? Because this thing looked way too big to be a woodpecker.

Anonymous said...

CT, did you check the stats also on search for ivory billed woodpecker without the hyphen, and IBWO? And do the cities match this way?

cyberthrush said...

no listing for "IBWO" (not enough searches done), but for "Ivory billed Woodpecker" without the hyphen, the listing does indeed change quite a bit:

1. Little Rock, AR, USA
2. St Louis, MO, USA
3. Raleigh, NC, USA
4. Minneapolis, MN, USA
5. Washington, DC, USA
6. Atlanta, GA, USA
7. Denver, CO, USA
8. Austin, TX, USA
9. Portland, OR, USA
10. Boston, MA, USA

John L. Trapp said...

You can also search Google Trends by subregions within the U.S., in which case AR, MS, LA, AL, and SC all are in the top 5 (in that order), at least in the search I did just now, but Google Trends can sometimes yield seemingly quirky results.