Be Careful With "Google Trends" Information

The "Break It Down" blog recently had an entry called "Which is the Hottest Java Web Framework? Or Maybe Not Java?" that uses a series of Google Trends queries to try to gauge the relative popularity of various web development frameworks. Go check it out. I'll wait. No really -- take your time.

Full disclosure: I'm a committer on the Spring Framework, having originally developed the Spring Portlet MVC framework that is part of Spring Web MVC. So I guess I would say I have a dog in this fight (a metaphor that I don't like nearly as much as Michael Vick does).

Okay, now that you're back, I'll say that I'm not sure this research is terribly meaningful. Google Trends is a list of how often people searched a given term on Google. So if people are searching for a given framework does that mean its popular and that people like it? Or does it mean there are a lot of problems with it? Does it mean their documentation stinks and their forums are hard to search?

For my specific dog -- I mean, framework, I suspect the Spring Web MVC results are largely incomplete. Most people interested in it know that it is part of the Spring Framework, so will they really go to Google and type in "Spring MVC"? Or will they just search on "spring" or "spring framework" "web mvc", or "web flow" (all inappropriate to include due to false positives)? Or do they just go to springframework.org and use the reference documentation and the discussion forums? The term "spring web mvc" (the most correct way to refer to the framework) wasn't included at all -- if you add just "spring web mvc" and "spring web" (both reasonable to include, I think), then the results are much more on-par with JSF and Wicket and well ahead of Struts 2 and Seam.

I imagine Seam (definitely not my dog) is also suffering from the fact that people likely just search on "seam", but it's impossible to count that. In the case of Wicket, the query includes the word "wicket", which means it is including searches coming from Croquet enthusiasts and from Star Wars fans looking for pictures of their favorite Ewok. In the case of JSF, the query includes the word "jsf", which means it is including searches coming from military aviation buffs looking for more information on the Joint Strike Fighter.

One other strange thing from these results -- the inquiries on "Struts 2" are mostly in Chinese (like 6 times more than in English). What the heck does that mean? Is there really a disproportionately large amount of Struts 2 development going on in China? Or is there some linguistic issue that is creating a bunch of false positives there.

Anyway, interesting stuff I suppose, but ultimately not really useful information.