Want proof that Twitter’s become the World’s information source? Read on.
So this blogger, me, took his common several time a day look at Google Trends for Monday, March 11th and found that sitting right at number one position was “Mother’s Day.”
A click on the link for that Google “hot search” revealed content, blogs, and articles, written with “Mother’s Day” in the title. And Google News, which claims to show the news that’s happening in real time, although it was adjusted early last year to actually be a day off, got caught up in the Twitter problem because of the “day back” adjustment.
Thus, when we go through this process as of Monday, March 11, at 11:11 EST (NOTE THE TIME):
1) Go to Google Trends
2) Note the top search trend is “Mother’s Day 2013”
3) Click on the words for “Mother’s Day 2013”
4) We’re taken to a list of search results. The Google News results are listed at the top, so we…
5) Click on the “News for Mothers Day 2013”
6) And we find a lot of articles written by, in order of appearance, and with titles, the following: Top 10 inappropriate Mother’s Day films – Metro, Songs for Mother’s Day – The Daily Shift, Mothers Day: A ForexLive tribute – ForexLive (blog), Mother’s Day 
Battlegrounds: Kettle and Toaster Breakfast Packs – Current.com.au
7) And we note that all of the content has this date: March 10, 2013
In other words, because Google Trends was stupidly adjusted to be off by one day, it’s picking up what was Sunday’s Twitter-driven content subject trend: Mother’s Day.
I mean these people, and a lot of them, seriously believed March 10, 2013 was Mother’s Day, even though the listing for Mother’s Day is May 12th. But guess what? That’s for The United States, and even Google doesn’t make that distinction.
A search for “Mother’s Day” in Google gives you this big lettered sign that reads “Mother’s Day, May 12, 2013.” So even Google’s failed to tell us that Mother’s Day in the United Kingdom is on the fourth day of lent – that just happens to be March 10th, 2013.
So, guess what? Mother’s Day in the UK was the driver for all kinds of tweets and content celebrating Moms. The trouble is, there was no way to know that Mother’s Day was being celebrated in the UK and none of the social media and search platforms told you or me.
And Google’s silly playing around with Google Trends guaranteed a continued trend of even more content written about UK Mother’s Day the next day, and because of that, “Mother’s Day” dominates the Worldwide search trend.
All of this proves the following: Twitter drives content production as much as Google does today, and that Google’s search system fails to give country-specific differences for special days. Google would have you think Mother’s Day is May 12th, when it’s a different day, March 10th, in Britain.
Call James Bond!
See, Google may have different search engines in the UK, but guess what? The overall search results don’t reflect that difference in America.
So Google has to readjust its search system to express what’s happening in a specific part of the World, and present that to us.
Stay tuned.