Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Fascinating. Although the tiny numbers for 'vaccine' and 'birth control' make me query what's going on here


Those seem to be pretty specific pages on wikipedia, likely to refer specifically to what the song was.

Vaccine links to the polio vaccine and birth control to the (nearly empty) wikipedia page for 'oral contraceptive pill'


The pill link is just a portal to other links. When I used DDG to search for "the pill" it took me to one of the child links first, which has rich details on one form of the pill.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_oral_contraceptive_pi...


Vaccine is foreign word to one afraid vaccines.

Pro choice, pro life ... what the heck is birth control?

Is Elizabeth the 2nd the most popular person in that list of people or is beth a common name?

[edit: I mean to say, there are hot topics, and search results that land on wikipedia, and the two don't line up super well for some specific parts of this particular report]


> Is Elizabeth the 2nd the most popular person in that list of people or is beth a common name?

If I Google "Elizabeth", there is no link to the Wikipedia page for Elizabeth II on the first page in Google (I do realize of course that Google results can differ wildly by person), but Elizabeth I, and links to various news items about Elizabeth II. Of course people might click Elizabeth I and end up clicking through to her. I have a hard time thinking that drives a huge amount of traffic, though. If I Google "Beth", neither queen is on the first page.

But I'd think the huge amount of the news coverage about her related to a long range of other events and people, is likely what drives a large part of what drives the Wikipedia lookups. E.g. she's probably been in the news even more than usual over the last year over things like the Trump visits and the Meghan Markle wedding, but there's also a steady stream of coverage of her due to various other visits to/by high profile people.


When you're on Google searching for the Queen, you just type "the Queen". There's been no other queen (apart from the Bohemian Rhapsody guys) in a major English-speaking country for the better part of a century, so there's no need to refer to her by her name.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: