{"id":3413,"date":"2021-11-08T11:31:27","date_gmt":"2021-11-08T09:31:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.tomayac.com\/2021\/11\/08\/things-mode-and-strings-mode-in-google-trends\/"},"modified":"2021-11-08T11:31:27","modified_gmt":"2021-11-08T09:31:27","slug":"things-mode-and-strings-mode-in-google-trends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomayac.com\/wordpress\/2021\/11\/08\/things-mode-and-strings-mode-in-google-trends\/","title":{"rendered":"Things mode and strings mode in Google Trends"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\t\t<p><a href=\"https:\/\/trends.google.com\/trends\/\">Google Trends<\/a> has essentially two modes:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Strings:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/trends.google.com\/trends\/explore?q=jaguar\">&quot;jaguar&quot;<\/a>,\nwhere it doesn't know if you mean the\n<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jaguar_Cars\">car make<\/a>, the\n<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jaguar\">animal<\/a>, or even the ancient\n<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mac_OS_X_Jaguar\">MacOS X operating system version<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Things:<\/strong>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/trends.google.com\/trends\/explore?q=%2Fm%2F012x34&amp;geo=DE\">&quot;Jaguar (car make)&quot;<\/a>,\nwhere you tell it very clearly that you mean the car make.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A colleague of mine fell for this and was looking at the\n<a href=\"https:\/\/trends.google.com\/trends\/explore?q=progressive%20web%20apps\">landing page for Progressive Web Apps in <em>strings<\/em> mode<\/a>\nand was confused. The page the colleague should have looked at is the\n<a href=\"https:\/\/trends.google.com\/trends\/explore?q=%2Fg%2F11bzxympx6\">landing page for Progressive Web Apps in <em>things<\/em> mode<\/a>.\nIts URL is <code>https:\/\/trends.google.com\/trends\/explore?q=%2Fg%2F11bzxympx6<\/code>.<\/p>\n<p>You can recognize <em>things<\/em> mode by looking at the <code>q<\/code> query parameter in the\nURL. If it starts with <code>%2Fg%2F<\/code> (URL-decoded: <code>\/g\/<\/code>), you are in <em>things<\/em> mode.\nThe funny code <code>11bzxympx6<\/code> after that is the\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wikidata.org\/wiki\/Property:P2671\">Knowledge Graph identifier<\/a>. When\nyou\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=%2211bzxympx6%22&amp;oq=%2211bzxympx6%22&amp;aqs=chrome..69i57.994j0j1&amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8\">search for <code>&quot;11bzxympx6&quot;<\/code> on Google<\/a>,\nyou end up with exactly one search result that points to the\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wikidata.org\/wiki\/Q23679990\">Wikidata page for Progressive Web Apps<\/a>.\nIf you know the Knowledge Graph ID of something, you can hand-craft a URL that\npoints people at exactly the right semantic search result on Google:\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/search?kgmid=\/g\/11bzxympx6\"><code>https:\/\/www.google.com\/search?kgmid=\/g\/<strong>11bzxympx6<\/strong><\/code><\/a>.\nSee the bold Knowledge Graph ID at the end of the URL.<\/p>\n<p><img src=\"https:\/\/blog.tomayac.com\/images\/google-trends.png\" alt=\"Google Trends showing &quot;strings&quot; and &quot;things&quot; mode side by side.\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Note how Google Trends in the screenshot above even helpfully points out that\u2026<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>[t]his comparison contains both Search terms and Topics, which are measured\ndifferently.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\u2026and directs the reader to a\n<a href=\"https:\/\/support.google.com\/trends\/answer\/4359550#:~:text=Compare%20terms%20and%20topics\">help resource<\/a>\nto learn more about the difference.<\/p>\n<p>I happen to know all this because this is what I did my PhD in, and I have\n<a href=\"https:\/\/dl.acm.org\/doi\/pdf\/10.1145\/2872427.2874809\">a paper at the ACM<\/a> that\ndescribes the process we used for migrating our proprietary Knowledge Graph\npredecessor Freebase to the community-maintained Wikidata.<\/p>\n<p>It's rare that I get to tell anyone about this stuff, so now you know more than\nyou probably wanted to ever hear about this\u2026 You can learn more about this time\nof my Google life in my previous\n<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.tomayac.com\/2021\/10\/02\/14-years-at-google\/#the-phd-time-(2010%E2%80%932014)\">blog post<\/a>.\nMy manager back in the days didn't care about any of this, but maybe it's at\nleast interesting to you\u2026 <code>:-)<\/code><\/p>\n\n\t\t\t<p>\n\t\t\t\t<img alt=\"Thomas Steiner\" width=\"32\" height=\"32\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.tomayac.com\/feed.php?dl=https%3A%2F%2Fblog.tomayac.com%2F2021%2F11%2F08%2Fthings-mode-and-strings-mode-in-google-trends%2F&dp=%2F2021%2F11%2F08%2Fthings-mode-and-strings-mode-in-google-trends%2F&dt=Things%20mode%20and%20strings%20mode%20in%20Google%20Trends\" alt=\"\">\n\t\t\t\t<br\/>This post appeared first on <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.tomayac.com\/2021\/11\/08\/things-mode-and-strings-mode-in-google-trends\/\">https:\/\/blog.tomayac.com\/2021\/11\/08\/things-mode-and-strings-mode-in-google-trends\/<\/a>.\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\tGoogle Trends has essentially two modes:<\/p>\n<p>Strings: &quot;jaguar&quot;,<br \/>\nwhere it doesn&#8217;t know if you mean the<br \/>\ncar make, the<br \/>\nanimal, or even the ancient<br \/>\nMacOS X operating system version.<br \/>\nThings:<br \/>\n&quot;Jaguar (car make)&quot;,<br \/>\nwhere you tell it very c&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"intlwemo_wallet_address":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomayac.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomayac.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomayac.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomayac.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomayac.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3413"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomayac.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3414,"href":"https:\/\/tomayac.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3413\/revisions\/3414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomayac.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomayac.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomayac.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}