August 16, 2007

How Freaky, er, Healthy is Your City?

Crabby is certainly not the first person to discover Google Trends, but it's an amusing little time-waster if you find yourself online wanting to avoid Actual Work. Of course regular Cranky Fitness readers would never think of surfing during work hours. In fact Crabby is sure the only reason why her site visits drop off dramatically in the evenings and on weekends is that you all have creative flexible schedules and you love working when everyone else is home!

Anyway, the deal is this: Google, being quite snoopy, compiles everybody's search terms. It also knows where you live. Thus you can find out what people from various metropolitan areas are searching for and compare them!

(As yet another aside, do those of you with Google email end up with those really funny/freaky context-driven ads that appear next to your email messages? And sometimes they get a whole different idea of what you're talking about and just run with it? Perhaps we should have a contest for most amusing juxtaposition of email subject/advertisement).

Sorry. Crabby is having a hard time staying on topic today. Perhaps she is just hyper from all that broccoli tea she's been drinking.

So one cool thing about Google Trends is that it normalizes the search data--it's not done by pure numbers, otherwise the big cities would always be on top. Instead, it's done by relative popularity. So you get an idea of what the citizens of different cities are most interested in. And since this is a health blog (sort of), Crabby decided to find out Who Searches for What in Health Related Categories!

Are you ready? Here are some Top Five Cities in various categories:

Nutrition:

People who search for "Antioxidants" tend to be residents of:
Chennai, (India); Mumbai, (India), New York, Washington DC, and San Diego.

Those who care more about "Calories" live in:
New York, Washington D.C., Boston, San Diego and Seattle;

While those in search of "Twinkies" live in:
Salt Lake City, St Louis, Seattle, Chicago, and Phoenix.

Exercise:

Those who search for "Pilates" reside in:
New York, San Francisco, Buenos Aires, Santiago, and Sydney.

However, people more interested in Dodgeball hit the playgrounds of: Chicago, New York, Washington, Seattle, and San Francisco.

And those who enjoy the subtleties of "Mud Wrestling": can be found in Seattle, Melbourne, Washington DC, Brentford, (UK); and London.

Body Image:

Who cares how Big they are? "Biggest" cities for "Average Weight Male" were New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Toronto, and London.

But women don't have weight issues! At least according to Google, "Average Weight Female" was not a popular enough search to compile a graph. (Crabby should have thought of a better query but did not want to go back and do the Men's over.)

The search for "Average Penis Size" was popular in: Sydney, Melbourne, Chicago, New York, and Seattle. (No Wonder They Call Australia "Down Under!").

And yet again "Average Breast Size" did not have enough searches to rate. However, "Breast Implants" were popular in: Salt Lake City, Tampa, Phoenix, AZ, San Diego, and Irvine, (CA).

Diets:

"Heart Healthy Diet": It was popular in Houston, Atlanta, Chicago, New York, and Toronto.

But the "Cookie Diet": was a favorite of those in Delray Beach (Florida), Boca Raton, Miami, Boston, and Cambridge.

Skip the diet, just take a pill, and don't worry about the Oily Discharge? Folks who prefer to search for "Alli" tend to live in: Orlando, Tampa, Atlanta, Miami, and Houston.

And in the Miscellaneous Category:

Looking for an "Oxygen Bar?" You probably live in San Francisco, Pleasanton, Minneapolis, Miami, or Denver.

But those who prefer "Colonics": tend to hail from New York, San Diego, Phoenix, Atlanta, and Irvine (CA).

And finally, the Very Flexible folks wanting to get their fix of "Nude Yoga" do it in Denver, San Francisco, New York, Irvine (CA), and Pleasanton (CA)!

So Crabby is going to forgo the temptation to analyze any of this--she suspects you all might have some observations of your own!

Any surprises? And feel free to contribute any amusing Google Trends you may find, too, or any Bizarre Google Ad/ email combinations. Or as usual, please let Crabby know any Damn Thing that's On your Mind today!

15 comments:

  1. Nude Yoga. Y'know, why not? It makes fine sense and if you're naked you can't blame any restriction of movement on your clothing.
    And how about those wacky folks in Irvine? Showing off the implants in Nude Yoga?

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  2. I'm originally from Salt Lake so those two things didn't really surprise me one bit. Ha, ha.

    Coincidentally, I hate Twinkies.

    I found all of your findings to be very interesting and amusing.

    I never would have thought of doing yoga naked, but now I think I will have to try it. In the privacy of my own living room, of course.

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  3. Seems people in San Fran are a little more concerned about everything health related...maybe it's all that time wearing a swim suit.

    Hmm St. Louis is close to KC and I can't say I've ever searched for twinkies, but I totally looked at the Cookie Diet because I thought someone had to be yankin my chain.

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  4. so i can find me an average weight male on a hearty healthy diet easy in TO, eh?

    sweet!

    I'm just thankful he won't be into naked yoga.

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  5. Phoenix searches are colonics and breast implants? How sad. It is true though. There are a lot of superficial people here. I still love it though.

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  6. I'm surprised that none of those turned up Austin. I'm from there originally and I can tell you, there's a LOT of Health Obsessed, erm, Health Conscious people. They're mostly of the hippy, crunchy granola, Birkenstock variety though.

    It is the home of Whole Foods, after all. :)

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  7. Mud-wrestling? Work it! I used to live in London, about a half mile from Brentford. That's awesome. I would have never guessed...

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  8. My favorite Google ad/e-mail combination is the spam folder. I open it to empty it-- (usually to see the "Hooray, no spam here!" and the Google ad is always some terrible recipe where the main ingredient is Spam. Spam casserole, spicy spam kabobs, spam omelette-- yuck! It's really funny, though.

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  9. I have three different Gmail accounts, but I never see the context google ads at all, because I use Mozilla Thunderbird to read all my mail. Ha! Thank FSM for POP3.

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  10. Yeah, I never see the ads either in my email.

    I actually got on google trends this morning from your recommend but forgot to come back CF to leave a comment! THe only thing I noticed that was really odd was I SWEAR everything I typed in from weight loss to sunburn, Australia was always #1! (??) Am I missing something?

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  11. Whoops. Sorry. "Aaron" was actually "Katieo" I neglected to actually look at the name before hitting publish.

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  12. Twinkies does not surprise me. Nor does "average weight," although I don't know how many of us Chicagoans are average. We're the city of broad shoulders...and round waists.

    And with that grim nutritional knowledge I'm planning to stuff myself with teppan shrimp and insanely fatty egg sauce tomorrow night, topped off with at least four mai tais.

    Sigh. Life is hard.

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  13. Okay, so I live in New York where trends change every three minutes and I usually miss most of them. But, for the past five years I have wintered in Delray Beach Florida, four blocks from the Boca Raton border and NO ONE ever bothered to tell me about the Cookie Diet???

    I am just a bit miffed! Terrie

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  14. Just wondering, have you made the move to D.C. yet? Thought I would let you know, being in that area, you are just 6 short hours from Abingdon, VA where I recommended the Virginia Creeper Trail for a hiking or biking destination. You may want to wait until the fall though, as it is purty durn hot. Oh, and of course while you're down further south, another hour's drive will put you at the Noligachucky River where there is cool white water rafting, more hiking, and swimming.

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  15. Hi all!
    Back for a bit after Computer Nightmares forced a little vacation from Cranky Fitness. But it did give me the opportunity to have a great time exploring more of DC! (Though not as far south as the Creeper Trail, which we'll definitely have to check out at some point!)

    Thanks for the great comments and I hope to catch up with you all a bit better in the coming week!

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