Very cool! Thank you for this. I enjoyed looking at the meteoric rise of the frequency of words such as web and twitter. Apparently, 1970 was the pinnacle of frustration, 1972 was the apex of achievement, and 1973 was the height of boredom. I concur.
Just be warned. I reported errors to Google when I was searching "sound on the goose" that still remain.
Emmett
Here is a study from MIT that used the Google word frequency data. The study says that word length is more influenced by information content than by frequency of use (an 80-year old theory).
This study is the first known to me that fulfils one of Google's reasons for building it--developing a resource so scholars can better study languages.
Emmett
Indeed. I recall an article I did back in the 90s where I needed to use the term that means "connecting to a computer-based interface." I wasn't sure what was correct, since the concept was still new, and I'd seen all these used: "logon" "log-on" "log on" "login" "log-in" "log in." Then it dawned on me to use Google and compare the hit counts (being sure to include the search term in quotes). The winner was the same back then, but I'll save you all the effort of checking. Here's today's hit counts …
logon: 22,100,000
log-on: 28,200,000
log on: 28,200,000 (Google doesn't "see" some punctuation even between quotes, and even when using "advanced search.")
login: 2,160,000,000
log-in: 795,000,000
log in: 795,000,000
The clear winner was, and still is, obvious. I'm just glad I didn't have to choose between "log-in" and "log in" since Google's handling of hyphens is a bit confusing. Their Search Help didn't (help). If anyone knows a way around this apparent limitation, I'd appreciate hearing it.