Hard evidence of my Internet problem

The two highest hours are 2 am and 3 am :s
I'm also not up before 10 and even then, just barely :p

So, I go into my Google Personalized Search, which basically keeps track of all your searches when you are logged into Google. I am always logged into Google now b/c of Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Reader, and Blogger, all of which automatically log you into Google. You can tell if you are logged in if your Gmail address is in the top right when you are on Google.com.

I check out the "Trends" in the search history, and see some shocking things...

Take a look at the image at the top of this post. It graphs the number of searches I did on Google during each hour of the day over the past year. I do more searches at 2 am and 3 am than at any other time!!! That is ridiculous. I'm also not very active before 10 am, and even then, not very much.

Ok, a few caveats about this data though. One, I'm not sure if time zones are taken into consideration b/c I did spend like 7 months in the West coast (3 hours behind) time zone (Seattle and California) and like a month in Central (1 hour behind) time zone (Winnipeg) in the past year. Plus, it's searches, so I could be up at 10, I just don't do any Google searches b/c I know where I'm going (e-mail, reader, slashdot, news, weather, chat, etc.)

I Google a lot

On average over this past year, I did almost 30 searches a day!

Notice the dip on Saturday!

This graph is encouraging. It says that I have a life on Saturday!!! AND Friday nights!!! Apparently I have a social life :). I probably shouldn't celebrate too much since I only do like 5 fewer searches on an average Saturday than the other days of the week.

Top searches, top sites that appear in the search result, and top clicks

I love Googling myself, and recently I beat out the minister for the top spot!

These are some interest stats. I love Googling myself and also Mike Perrow. I also love Wikipedia and Google Maps.

Ok, some caveats. I use Firefox. The default search engine is Google. If you just type in say, "stuff on cats" in the address bar and click enter, what happens, is that it searches "stuff on cats" in Google and then automagically clicks on the first link for you (it's like the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button). That is logged as a search query in the Google search history. Many of these spurious searches are because of that, for example, I never Google "facebook", I just type in facebook.com in the address bar, but that's not a valid address, which I think causes a Google search query. However, I just tried it and it didn't happen. Firefox may have changed something, b/c when I look at the last like 30 days, Facebook doesn't appear even though I have used Facebook more in the last 30 days than I ever have (thanks to the news feeds :)). I do (or did) however, go to the sites listed quite a bit. No porn showed up, yippee!!! (No, I did not doctor the results :p)

As with all stats, there is probably some truth hidden somewhere in there, but take it with a grain of salt.


On another note: it's 2 am, and I'm not sleeping yet :s. I did however, wake up at 7:30 today! (But snoozed until 8). I was home at 10 am back with $120 of groceries from Loblaws!!! Most productive I've been in the morning for a long time :) (probably since getting smoothies at Google for breakfast)