Fonseka Bubble on Google...

Well…these are interesting times that we are living in. The election heat is felt everywhere, with the announcement of the Presidential Election and a lot of talk is about the Sarath Fonseka from the opposition.

Several months back this would have been something that no one would have even imagined. But Political debate aside, I thought of just simply checking out the how Sarath Fonseka’s entry into Sri Lankan politics affected the online behavior and public search patterns.

A simple trend research on Google Trends revealed how the Fonseka bubble burst into the online community. It’s quite interesting to see the relative increase of search queries for the keyword “Sarath Fonseka”.

If we are able to relate each peak on the graph with actual events from the real world we would be able to easily relate why the search patterns have increased in such a manner.

For example the peak marked by “C” occurred during end of May 2009 is when General Sarath Fonseka was to be made Chief of Defense Staff. The steady increase from October 2009 shows the relative high volume of search queries made with the Generals name just when he was announcing his resignation and his interest in entering into politics subsequently.

The other interesting information to be gathered would be the Google News Results marked at each peak point.

These peak points marked by different letters feature the most relevant Google News result occurred when each peak was created.

It would be really interesting to see how the Search Trend for Sarath Fonseka turn out to be in the coming months, we can see a clear upward trend but have we reached the highest peak yet? The Bubble will subside at some point, and even if he wins or lose it would be interesting to see at which point it would subside…