Yesterday was Mothers Day and across American men were waking up and Googling,

“How to make French Toast”

I had more hope for them than I did for the guys who were searching for the next related phrase,

“How to scramble an egg”

Kinda waiting for the last minute on that one eh guys?

How do I know what people are Googling? With yet another cool tool from Google Labs.

Google Zeitgeist and the hourly Google Trends Top 100

What is Google Zeitgeist?

zeit·geist | Pronunciation: ‘tsIt-“gIst, ‘zIt | Function: noun | Etymology: German, from Zeit (time) + Geist (spirit) | Date: 1884 | Meaning: the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era.

“Zeitgeist” means “the spirit of the times”, and Google reveals this spirit to us through the aggregation of millions of search queries they receive every day. Google has several tools that give insight into global, regional, past and present search trends. These tools are available for us to play with, explore, and learn from. We use them for everything from blogging ideas to trivial pursuit answers.

I hope you enjoy exploring the spirit of our time.

Tune in next Monday when I show you how to discover what people are twittering about in real time!