2004.
The last year that the Detroit Pistons won an NBA Championship.
The year that Google went public, initially offering 19,605,052 shares at $85 a pop. Alphabet (Google’s parent co.) shares are now worth well beyond $1,000.
Facebook was founded, initially limited only to Harvard students. MySpace still had 5 million users.
Popular movie “The Incredibles” released.
“Yeah!” by Usher, “Hey Ya! by OutKast, and “Numb” by Linkin Park all graced the Billboard Top 100.
Needless to say, a lot has changed.
But have you ever wondered how certain industry topics have fared over the years (according to Google, at least)? Thanks to Google Trends, we can take a look at different terms/topics and analyze search engine popularity all the way back to 2004!
Now, don’t get us wrong- just because something is Googled more than other topics, doesn’t necessarily depict its overall popularity. These things are always subject to a plethora of different factors. Nonetheless, the data is still interesting to look at.
Some Quick Notes:
These notes pertain to the graphics below.
Interest over time (The graph)
Numbers represent search interest relative to the highest point on the chart for the given region and time. A value of 100 is the peak popularity for the term. A value of 50 means that the term is half as popular. A score of 0 means there was not enough data for this term.
Users searching for the term also searched for these queries. You can sort by the following metrics:
* Top – The most popular search queries. Scoring is on a relative scale where a value of 100 is the most commonly searched query, 50 is a query searched half as often as the most popular query, and so on.
* Rising – Queries with the biggest increase in search frequency since the last time period. Results marked “Breakout” had a tremendous increase, probably because these queries are new and had few (if any) prior searches.
This data is representative of Google’s search history, and does not include data from other search engines.
Achromatopsia
Amblyopia
Cataract Surgery
Color blindness
Diabetic Macular Edema
Diabetic retinopathy
Dry eye syndrome
Eye drops
Glaucoma
LASIK
Macular degeneration
Near-sightedness
Ophthalmology
Optometry
Presbyopia
Retinal vein occlusion
Retinitis pigmentosa