Google Trends (which measures internet activity, searches, news, etc that goes through its network) is a useful free tool for looking at changing or trending topics and events through time. Today I ran a query in Australia to compare the Rudd-led Federal Government and the Global Financial Crisis.
The results, shown above, at first glance are not that surprising: the GFC hits in October, and also provides a boost to the Government (in terms of media mentions, searches in Google about them, etc) who take on the role of appearing in control of the situation.
Interestingly, if you analyse the week-to-week index of both trends - you will actually notice that the weekly trend median of the Government has actually decreased (from a median of 0.86 to 0.81) by six per cent. This could possibly indicate the challenge of cutting through to the electorate in a noisy environment where there are many points of view and sources of informatio to wade through.
View the original query here - or try one for yourself.
