The Google Trends Spike Before the D.C. Shooting Raises New Questions

https://www.allenanalysis.com/p/the-google-trends-spike-before-the

29•kldavis4•2mo ago

Comments

downrightmike•2mo ago

I'd bet $100 that all the shootings are just admin attempts to incite justifications for admin actions.

seizethecheese•2mo ago

Even if plausible for one case “all the shootings” is ludicrous, of course.

downrightmike•2mo ago

I was tempted to put "right on right" shootings, but the "all" should be sufficient.

epistasis•2mo ago

I wish this had a bit more technical information, because I don't think I learned much here other than some people are looking into it, and apparently shouldn't subpoena IPs or anything.

Is there a time zone misalignment, perhaps? If it's one or two searches, could it be the shooter searching their own name? Unless there's a clear technical reason showing these to be artifactual, why is a subpoena premature?

stOneskull•2mo ago

> could it be the shooter searching their own name?

makes sense. like, wanting to see what will show up when others eventually search him.

arccy•2mo ago

too many words with no conclusion at all

Eridrus•2mo ago

This does not currently show up on Google Trends, so unless you're trying to go full conspiracy mode here I don't see why we should trust this random screenshot to be accurate: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=now%207-d&geo=...

giarc•2mo ago

If you change the region, it does show up.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=now%207-d&geo=...

Eridrus•2mo ago

Are you in a different timezone?

I an in EST and do not see any traffic before 7pm Nov 26 EST.

I can confirm I am seeing data in EST time because the latest data available is from 20 mins ago in EST.

giarc•2mo ago

I think these graphs are just too unreliable. If I set it to Past 90 Days, there's a blip on Sept 6, 2025 with a value of 28. The next data point isn't until Nov 27, 2025 and it goes up to 100. If I then set it to Past 12 Months, the only data is in Nov and there is nothing for Sept. Then, even more interestingly, if I change it to "News Search" (instead of Web Search) and set it to Past 12 Months, the biggest spike is actually May 18-24, 2025 where the value is 100 and the Nov blip is only 9. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=CA&gprop=news&q...

EDIT - that was set to Canada. If I set it to Worldwide the values change obviously.

londons_explore•2mo ago

I'm gonna guess some timezone related bug in googles data source - especially when the client timezone and country specific Google site might be set wrong but incorrectly trusted for this data source.

gmuslera•2mo ago

May not be related with this in particular, but how many names that are not tied to any shooting or whatever appear in low activity google trends? It could happen with most names around the region where you live, i.e. related with spam campaigns, AI searches, people curious about people in their neighbourhood or whatever that covers most of the people? If it is something common giving a reasonable time frame before a given moment, it could be a coincidence that may not be so rare. Checking only backwards for a particular event and not doing the check forward to see if that is unusual is a missing link there.

juancn•2mo ago

Also, bugs in time handling of buckets should also be considered (or rendering).

At Google's scale, trend analysis is anything but easy.

qwertox•2mo ago

Does this mean that going from 1 query to 3 is a 200% increase, hence 20 pixels high, which is the same as going from 1000 queries to 3000 queries in that same timeslot? Same height? Could be noise then, if 3 people searched for the name. Or maybe they were chatting with him and the told them his name and that he's about to do something harmful. But noise is different, those are not neglectable peaks.

delichon•2mo ago

> less work means less worth

s/worth/meaning

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