#google zeitgeist

Google Zeitgeist is a collection of the most talked about events searched on to Google during the course of a year. It collects data including search rate and the time it took for the news of the event to spread across the world. In November 2015, Paris came under attack as the notorious Islamic State claimed to have taken up to 130 lives in the heart of the French capital during a series of attacks that took place across the city. Some of the attacks happened to take place at the national stadium and a large music venue as well as several bars across the city on a dark Friday 13th.

The event was a huge thing on social media, which saw Google’s search engine reach its highest searches for ‘Paris’ in its existence and even doubled the amount of searches than the Charlie Hebdo attacks in the city less than a year earlier. News of the attack took just over one hour for Google users over in Saul Paulo to begin searching what was going on at around 22:34 Paris time.

A popular trend for the event which was used throughout many social media platforms including Twitter, Instagram and Facebook was #PrayForParis.

The most viewed video during the attacks was posted onto YouTube by Sky News titled ‘Paris Attack | Bataclan Hostages Leave’ which saw the moment police raided the music venue in search for the terrorists and received 2.8m+ views and counting.

Auschwitz Survivors gather for Memorial 70 years After Liberation 

Google Zeitgeist, is a website that informs its audience on what is currently the "spirit of the moment", surprisingly the translation of zeitgeist. The site analyse’s trends and what is currently being searched the most frequently taking such aspects as search engine optimisation (SEO) into consideration. 

This weeks blog focuses on the top trends for Monday 26th, January 2015, found using the site Google Zeitgeist trend page  the site also linked the trend to a related article on the newspaper site the guardian click here to view  article. 

The name Auschwitz was trending with over 100,000 searches on Monday the 26th January 2015 in the United Kingdom. This particular human interest story was a popular story around the world as seventy years ago on the 27th January Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp was liberated by Soviet Forces. This story affects a great many people, even if you don't know someone affected by the concentration camp it should still be significant to every single person around the world. The article linked on Google Zeitgeist is to that of the guardian which stresses how many former prisoners fear that people will forget the atrocities of the war and that these atrocities may one day be repeated.

 Other things happening on this day include that of treacherous weather which also trends with over 100,000, death of a an opera singer and Australia Day. These stories in comparison to the Auschwitz story are comparatively less significant which may suggest why there aren't many more stories with more than 20,000 trends, other than that it may be indicative that on that particular day it was a slow news day. The story on the Guardian website was shared 1791 times and has 287 comments which also emphasises its significance to the public.

This article is obviously an important piece so it was also exposed on a number of different platforms with many different stories from peoples and institutions across the web and in other areas of media including that of all major Newspapers, interviews from many different broadcasters from around the world including that of the BBC, ITV and CNN and YouTube. Unsurprisingly social media also was involved with piece with the hashtag #HolocaustMemorialDay.