by Head of Search
Andrew Girdwood
Google's Music Trends has Snow Patrol likely to come out top as the world's most popular Christmas single. Andrew Girdwood
The Fray's "How To Save A Life" may just hang on and keep the top slot in Google's American charts.
Google's Music Trends sits between Google Talk and Google's Personalised search feature. As an optional extra the instant messenger will watch and record music playing on iTunes, Winamp, Windows Media Player and the Yahoo Music Engine. As users chat on Google Talk or within Gmail they can see what their friends are listening too. Google records this data and in Music Trends publishes charts of what is actually been listened to. Advanced users of Google's Music Trends can filter the chart information by country too. Google currently has musical trends for the likes of Turkey, Mexico, Columba and China. Users may also filter by genre. The genre choice can often be limited, however, as in Turkey the only genre Google knows about is "Other".
Google's searchers can also review their musical selection in their personalised search history although the search engine is yet to turn that data into a trend.
Personalised Search is one of Google's goals with the quirky offering. Google wants to sort the world's information and a running analysis of musical trends is part of that. A bigger piece in the puzzle is personalised search. If opting in to Google Music Trends sounds groovy then you automatically op in to Personalised Search. Once in Personalised Search Google begins to record everything you use Google to search for. Over time, the search engine may even begin to modify its search results to suite you. As Google notices an interest in James Blunt, for example, any searches you make for "Blunt" are more likely to include James Blunt related pages than, say, web pages about sharpening garden tools or a lack of diplomacy.
Once users have a search history with Google and they are happy they are getting results which are specially tailored to their needs then, it could be argued, these users are less likely to try alternative search engines like Microsoft's Live Search.
Another insidiously clever aspect on Google's Music Trends is the program's easy integration with other programs. Music Trends absorbs data from search rival Yahoo through communication with the Yahoo Music Engine. Google is up to version 4.5 of Google Desktop, a free set of software which allows users to run their own search engine on their PC and quickly find emails, documents and websites they've visited previously. With the release of Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Vista 2007 will see a more intense and even more important battle for control of the desktop search space.
Although Snow Patrol is leading the way for the number one single on Christmas late comers like the Christmas search marketing song may still reclaim the slot. Maybe.
