Do you google while watching WWTBAM??

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sunflower · #1 Post by **sunflower** » Thu May 15, 2008 7:39 pm

Since Friday, I have had a slight obsession with looking myself up on Google...hopefully it will pass soon enough!

But this article is interesting, about the Google "Hot Trends" on the T.S. Eliot quote from my episode, as well as "melanite", "bouzouki" and "cayenne, sugarloaf and red spanish".

So apparently not only are there a lot of viewers, they are looking up the questions on Google as they appear? Obviously enough people are doing it to skew the Google hot trends! Just wondering if this is something most people do? I personally just wait the 10 seconds to see the answer, am I an amateur???

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/webscou ... nds-a.html

Snaxx · #2 Post by **Snaxx** » Thu May 15, 2008 7:59 pm

This happened to a greater extent during prime-time. I think it was during Super Millionaire I saw an article that studied three spikes in googling certain terms during the show. The biggest was during the airing in the Eastern-Central time zones, then a smaller one an hour later during Mountain Time Zone airing, then a mid-sized one two hours after that when airing in the Pacific Time Zone.

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TheConfessor · #3 Post by **TheConfessor** » Thu May 15, 2008 8:22 pm

I might Google a WWTBAM question once or twice a week, mainly to see how hard it would be to Google. I don't recall Googling any questions from that episode.

That's an interesting article, but I don't really believe that almost all of the Googling happens at one moment of the day. The show is syndicated, so there would be a continuous trickle of Googling throughout the day, depending on when it is broadcast in each city and when some people get a chance to watch episodes they recorded.

According to one of the commenters on that blog thread, the Google hot topics report shows changes in relative interest in a subject, not the absolute number of searches per hour. So if no one ever Googles "april is the cruellest month," and then ten people do it in one hour, it may produce a huge spike. Then if ten more people search "april is the cruellest month" in the next hour, the spike will be much lower, and if the same rate continues for the rest of the day, the spike will disappear.

So ten people suddenly Googling an obscure WWTBAM question might produce a higher ranking on the hot topics list than 10,000 people Googling Britney Spears or Hillary Clinton.

peacock2121 · #4 Post by **peacock2121** » Fri May 16, 2008 7:57 am

Reminded me of something I thought during sunflower's PaF call.

I would not have spelled cruellest with 2 l's. I know, I know.

Anyway - did you think of spelling cruellest for her?

Did she spell it correctly?

Did it matter?

MarleysGh0st · #5 Post by **MarleysGh0st** » Fri May 16, 2008 8:09 am

peacock2121 wrote:Reminded me of something I thought during sunflower's PaF call.

I would not have spelled cruellest with 2 l's. I know, I know.

Anyway - did you think of spelling cruellest for her?

Did she spell it correctly?

Did it matter?

Both ways of spelling the word seem to be acceptable.

"April is the cruelest month" gets 94,000 hits.

"April is the cruellest month" gets 28,500.

peacock2121 · #6 Post by **peacock2121** » Fri May 16, 2008 8:11 am

MarleysGh0st wrote:
peacock2121 wrote:Reminded me of something I thought during sunflower's PaF call.

I would not have spelled cruellest with 2 l's. I know, I know.

Anyway - did you think of spelling cruellest for her?

Did she spell it correctly?

Did it matter?
Both ways of spelling the word seem to be acceptable.

"April is the cruelest month" gets 94,000 hits.

"April is the cruellest month" gets 28,500.

hmmmm

that is odd

Bob Juch · #7 Post by **Bob Juch** » Fri May 16, 2008 12:41 pm

Yesterday I looked at the top 100 and saw many from "Millionaire". Some of the others were puzzling until I watched "5th Grader" just now and remember that terms from most of the questions were there yesterday. I'll bet Final Jeopardy was too but I haven't see that yet.

VAdame · #8 Post by **VAdame** » Fri May 16, 2008 12:46 pm

I'll fess up that I Googled

Spoiler

Ireland population 2004

during today's show.

I was pretty sure and just wanted to check before they showed the answer. I can't think of a fast way to Google all 4 choices before the 30 seconds though, not the way that question was worded.

MarleysGh0st · #9 Post by **MarleysGh0st** » Fri May 16, 2008 12:49 pm

Bob Juch wrote:Yesterday I looked at the top 100 and saw many from "Millionaire". Some of the others were puzzling until I watched "5th Grader" just now and remember that terms from most of the questions were there yesterday. I'll bet Final Jeopardy was too but I haven't see that yet.

People have to google the questions from 5th Grader? That's funny!

In one of Jeff Foxworthy's less stellar moments, he ad-libbed about the answer to a question: "Winter starts in December and ends in February."

Might have been a few googlers double-checking that one!

Bob Juch · #10 Post by **Bob Juch** » Fri May 16, 2008 12:49 pm

VAdame wrote:I'll fess up that I Googled
Spoiler
Ireland population 2004
during today's show.

I was pretty sure and just wanted to check before they showed the answer. I can't think of a fast way to Google all 4 choices before the 30 seconds though, not the way that question was worded.

I didn't bother; I was sure of the answer. Your Google terms wouldn't have worked well if you had been a PAF.

VAdame · #11 Post by **VAdame** » Fri May 16, 2008 1:47 pm

Bob Juch wrote:
VAdame wrote:I'll fess up that I Googled
Spoiler
Ireland population 2004
during today's show.

I was pretty sure and just wanted to check before they showed the answer. I can't think of a fast way to Google all 4 choices before the 30 seconds though, not the way that question was worded.
I didn't bother; I was sure of the answer. Your Google terms wouldn't have worked well if you had been a PAF.

I agree -- I only Googled the one I was already reasonably sure of, while she was talking to her PAF. If I'd had no idea where to start, i.e., what answer made the most sense, I wouldn't have been able to Google fast enough.

ETA: I've only just started watching the show again in the past few weeks. It airs at 1PM here, so I'm actually working while it's on and just sorta half-paying attention to the TV across the room (assuming no patients or patients' family have switched the channel to Young & Restless while I was at lunch!) The reason I've been watching WWTBAM is that I'm so @#$%^&* sick & tired of All My Children that I've finally given it up!

sunflower · #12 Post by **sunflower** » Sat May 17, 2008 4:07 am

I never watch it live. But the DVR is faithfully set.

It never occurred to me to google...although I'm sure now it's going to happen a lot!! The only thing I did was practice googling leading up to my episode to see which types of questions were most conducive to PAF googling.