Date of research: 12/24/06 (website creation)
Rage of data: Beginning of year 2004 to end of 2006
Research tools: http://www.google.com/trends (google trends lab, Google labs product, still in beta mode)
File location on the internet: http://www.surgerytoday.com/google-trends (this webpage)
Everything here is expressed in relative terms. Nothing is in absolute numbers.
Why did I make this webpage? I wanted to improve my SEO (search engine optimization) on Google, plus I wanted to know plastic surgical trends. Puts my world into perspective.
Botox wins, "botox" also beats out in the google trends data compared to "breast implants"
Botox Faces Getting Younger And Younger
WJACtv.com - Jan 20 2006
breast implants|augmentation, botox
botox actually loses in this case. the "|" means "or"
Acupuncture wins, even over breast implants
More Pets Get Acupuncture for Ailments
ABC News - Apr 16 2006
Acupuncture shown to relieve tension headaches
Malaysia Star - Jul 29 2005
Acupuncture points to post-op comfort
New Scientist (subscription) - Jul 30 2004
Breast Augmentation wins
breast implants wins
free sheet music wins by far, my favorite website for free piano sheet music is http://www.sheetmusicarchive.net/, free sheet music also beats "breast implants" as a search term
Breast implants is more common (the plural form is a more popular search)
The winner is by far: "plastic surgery" as a search term on google.
Pretty much equal between the two terms in the search. However to be more detailed, free sheet music started out more popular in 2004 then became less popular than plastic surgery in 2006. I'm going to count plastic surgery as the popularity winner here because we are living in the current, not in 2004.
no contest, xbox is on top
Acupuncture beats out botox in this trend search
No contest, botox is on top by far
Tummy tuck is under breast augmentation
facelift is more common of a search term than face lift separately
I'm using varicose instead of varicose veins. The winner is: Liposuction
It's pretty much a tie.
Breast cancer is a much more common search
This is an interesting comparison of the search terms. Day spa used to be below plastic surgery in 2004. Then the gap has narrowed such that they are both the same. Due to the trends, it seems that day spa may beat out plastic surgery, plus there may be a search that makes day spa into plural: day spas. Thus I award the winner to "day spa."
google took a big leap in the middle of the year 2005, and leaped over microsoft from then on.
Yahoo leads the way in the number of searched for the word "yahoo" vs. the word "google." The battle google vs. yahoo continues. The gap is narrowing...
Gallbladder wins by far
Hernia searches wins by far
Hernia still leads the way.
Viagra wins
Breast wins
Breast cancer dominates
Silicone implants is the more common search term
piano outpaces viagra by far
piano is still more popular
Classic case of piano vs. violin. Well, the piano wins in the search game. Sad but true. I'm a violin fan.
violin wins
plastic surgery wins by a wide margin.
General Surgeon is more popular. This is interesting. The Surgeon (the person) is above the field of general surgery. It is the other away around for plastic surgeons and plastic surgery in this ressearch.
Somehow this doesn't surprise me, the plastic surgeon is more popular
breast augmentation is more popular!
plastic surgery is more popular
"Cosmetic surgery" is more popular of a google search engine term than "breast augmentation"
hernia wins
"microsoft" is mightier than "god" according to google.
recipe wins
recipe does it again
"free" my favorite word
beauty, fitness
fitness wins over beauty
dermalogica wins worldwide as a search term. But normalizing it to the US, Dermalogica and Obagi are equal.
From most popular to least (volume of searches on google) based on google lab trends. This is very helpful in putting my priorities in sync with the rest of the world. Assuming that the rest of the world is plugged into google. I've had to do a few more searches on Google Trends Labs to get all these in order. This is a very valuable list to me, and I hope it helps you as well.
In order:
free
music
microsoft == jobs
health
amazon
recipe
wii (currently) - had a big upswing this year.
xbox
money
aol
fitness = skin
god
free music
jesus
piano
beauty
yoga
massage
britney spears == madonna
sacramento = healthy
nashville
breast cancer
viagra
violin
hernia
back pain
skin care
acupuncture
botox
day spa
plastic surgery (very close to "day spa")
free sheet music
stockton
breast implants|augmentation
modesto
cosmetic surgery
breast implants == liposuction
gallbladder
breast augmentation
milpitas
plastic surgeon
facelift
dermalogica
varicose
tummy tuck
accupuncture
breast implant
inguinal hernia
face lift
restylane = obagi
general surgeon
boob job
general surgery
medical spa
dermabrasion
modesto bee
spider veins
abdominoplasty
The technique used here is to use Modesto as the first search item, followed by a series of commonly used words. For example: "modesto, police, bee, restaurants, restaurant." was used. What I found was that if I used "modesto, bee, police, restaurant", this gave me a cascading 4 items which then I could compare to a 5th item for ranking purposes.
Here's the popularity ranking within Modesto, CA. Once again, Modesto is the first search term.
I have a program called good keywords v2 which will generate top 10 keyword suggestions based on Yahoo search engine. If I type in Modesto as the Base Keyword, I get (12/25/06 search):
Pretty neat! If you want to download this program, it is Free (Free is one of the internet's best words. Good Keywords download site. Download it for yourself if you like. Now trying a neighboring city, Stockton
Stockton
Stockton Ca
Google Trends calculates the ratio of searches for your term coming from each city divided by total Google searches coming from the same city. In otherwords, the cities are normalized.
Sacramento has the highest volume by far, followed by stockton, then modesto, and finally Milpitas (and Freemont is after Milpitas)
The above puts my own searches in to a relative perspective. Because my searches in google are a reflection of my life, these results allow me to justify some of my life's priorities, and to compare my priorities with that of the world's.
I also try to help some friends with their webpages by putting them on my own server such as for Jamie Weidman of Countrywide Home loans. I feel a responsibility to know some things about search engine optimization.
Research done by Calvin Lee, MD Modesto Acupuncturist and General Surgeon and Tammy Wu, MD Modesto Plastic Surgeon. Their server hosts this website. Visit their website: surgery today. Google Trends is property of Google. There is even a google group about the google-labs-trends
http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html - is an interesting website about searches that gain rapidly.
Last updated 01/11/2007