Index: Search Engine Buzz

One of the quick and dirty ways to get a sense of the "buzz factor" for some topic on the interwebs is to just enter that topic -- assuming it's relatively unique -- into a search engine, like Google, and see how many hits you get back. The assumption is that popular things get a lot of hits..

There are some trrending algorithms out there based on this primitive tactic -- my fave is the TIOBE Programming Community Index. It's not exactly German-engineered precision mood-tracking but it an interesting metric.

So I'm going to give it a go for the purposes of making bets. Some of my bets will use changes in the Google hit count over the course of a few days to track buzz progress on some celebrity nonsense. Certainly Charlie Sheen-like events will have to cause a ripple, but heck, let's see.

I'll stick with Google until further notice and on the tracking leaderboard (The Fame-o-meter!) I will represent these numbers in the SEB column. We will track the current number of hits in millions and the percentage change from the date (next to the celeb name).

Crystal? Ahv Coorz..