Google Trends – “reddit alternative” | Hacker News Reader

Google Trends – “reddit alternative”

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53 pointsbane19 comments

You gotta be careful what assumptions you bake into things like this:

https://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-GB&q=Reddit+alte...

I understand the general discontent with reddit over recent events, but I'm not sure this is the best evidence for it.

Just about any successful company or website will have a similar chart if you look for "X alternative" google trends, corresponding roughly to the company's overall popularity.

Following posts logic facebook should be dead by now: https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=facebook%20alternati...

Funny you mention Facebook in a thread about Google Trends.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/mike-develin/debunking-prince...

Na, that chart is flat to declining.

Oddly enough, the "X alternative" chart could be seen as a health metric, at least as much as "X" itself would be.

You could argue "if people are searching for alternatives to my service, that means they (1) care enough about a core aspect of my service that they're inclined to find an alternative rather than simply leave, and (2) other alternatives/competitors are not already obvious (market dominance)."

Of course that's a stretch, and if enough people really are dissatisfied with your service you stand to lose them to alternatives, but I guess the point is that google trends doesn't really imply a whole lot in this case because it's going to be biased by many things - including overall popularity.

This is cross-posted from Reddit's /r/dataisbeautiful subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/3bzlup/goo...

I am not a fan of citing Google Trends as data visualization not because it's bad data, but because it invokes correlation-implies-causation hard and is extremely kneejerk.

On a slightly off-topic note, I made a more causal data visualization with official data on the impact of Digg v4.0 on Reddit activity: https://i.imgur.com/AdIKqFW.png

It's no good when noone wants to find an alternative:

https://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-GB&q=Reddit+alte...

I think this one is more meaningful: https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Reddit%20alternative...

Edit: fixed link

I'd posit this is: https://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-GB&q=Reddit+alte...

Ha. First thing I compared it to as well. It's a micro-storm in a very large tea-cup. Reddit will survive and the tiny and temporary (and already abandoned) actions of a few mods might shoot a few people off to Voat or another site but it won't do anything for the vast majority.

Default reddit is terrible to me. But there is virtually no overlap between my front page and the default front page. I am not subscribed to AMA. This whole thing just passed me by.

I'm not into heavy customization usually, but for reddit it is where all the value lies for me.

It also allows me to avoid most of the sexism and racism that does so well on there.

People said the same thing about Digg... Who would abandon the site over something like a redesign?

I took it off my bookmarks bar and added Voat. And besides, the Voat goat is cute.

I think there is something real there, look at this: https://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-GB&q=Reddit+alte...

You could probably see these trends as evidence of discontent, and from this view, reddit discontent is growing.

the last week results are weirdly oscillating https://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-GB&q=Reddit+alte...

Whoops, that's what I was trying to post :)

It's cute how you digg wannabes still love reddit for lack of an alternative.

Reddit has had several incidents in the past and they haven't had a substantial impact on site traffic. Maybe these blackouts have a greater effect on the average user and might actually make a difference. I wonder if there will be any long term consequences from this or if it will fade away like before.

Reddit is also getting more popular over time, so it's hard to judge exactly what that graph means.

Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1138/

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