There’s no use fighting it: Google has become ubiquitous. Websites can thrive or fail based on their ranking in Google results for important keywords. And result quantities can serve as useful, if unscientific, metrics for terms’ popularity.
I’d been playing around with Google searches based on geek parenting terms for a while, and yesterday’s xkcd inspired me to write about my findings. I don’t quite know what to make of some of the results, so I’m hoping our readers might have some insights. I searched for the terms “geek dad,” “geek mom,” and “geek parent,” each with and without quotation marks. You can see my findings graphed below.
Chart created using ChartGo
It makes perfect sense that, without quotation marks, “geek dad” and “geek mom” are nearly the same, and that “geek parent” is nearly exactly the two others added together. I find the results with the quotation marks fascinating, though: Why is the number of results for “geek mom” nearly three times the number for “geek dad,” and why are there so few for “geek parent? I’m really not trying to make any judgments here — I just find the numbers curious, and would like to know the reasons behind them.
Any thoughts? Please leave a comment.
