Whatdoestheinternetthink?net
logodesign, various, webdesign
At http://whatdoestheinternetthink.net you can actually find out what the internet’s global opinion is on a given search term: positive, negative or indifferent.
The site was live in January 2009 and went on to go viral twice; June/July 2009 and April 2012 (following a re-design and re-coding).
Since launching, this has sparked up some discussion as to how it all works. Well, you can understand that I don’t want to disclose too much of the ‘algorithm’ of the site. However: basically it searches based on associative (so far just English) sentences. The given search term is used in these sentences which are then sent off to the various search engines, counting the amount of results returned. (Sentences are double quoted before they are sent off, so as to make sure the search-engines search for occurrences of the *whole* sentence).
This, of course, produces questionable results which should not be taken very seriously. However, the more results (hits) returned, the more reliable these results can become. Do a search for George Bush and then Barack Obama, and you’ll see that the internet is certainly not far off – or perhaps even in-sync – with the result you had in mind.
My advice would be to do 10 ‘obvious’ searches, of which you are almost certain of the results, based on your perception of general opinion (e.g. ‘beer’, ‘sex’, ‘sleeping’, etc.) and then do 10 less obvious searches. If the first 10 convince you of even the slightest accuracy, the second 10 will perhaps be not as random as you thought.
Site review at Sitejabber.com:
I don’t love (web sites) easily . But I have to tell you this tickles me (I’m pretty ticklish). I think it’s the concept and the potential, rather than “buying” into the literal results.
Simply, “What-The-Internet-Thinks” is a search engine based on “sentiment”, being able to recognize subtleties such as sarcasm. I’ve hunted around and no one knows how this thing truly works, just that it’s popular.
WhatDoesTheInternetThink.net is like one of those flash Gallup polls that tap into public opinion. The web tool searches the internet for the global opinion on what the world thinks. It takes your search term and returns results as Positive, Negative or Indifferent. The tool searches the web using Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Twitter – or all combined.
What criteria the engine bases its results on is, as mentioned, unclear, so take the results with a pinch of salt.
I can see results being used to attempt marketing trends/evaluations, perceived ‘good’ & ‘bad’. So I’m not sure what else to tell you other than have fun with it, and if you’re doing some research be sure to footnote this review.
8 Responses to “Whatdoestheinternetthink?net”
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Date
June 17th, 2009
Tags
php, programming, viral, website
Technology
PHP, HTML, CSS, jQuery, JSON, Google SOAP, Bing API, Yahoo BOSS, Twitter API
Hi, I love the idea behind the website. I’ve been chatting about it with my friends concerning the attitude towards religion on the internet. And I think we may have found a bug.
If you search Barack Obama (I know, nothing to do with religion) you get back over 2.5 milllion results with almost all of them being “Don’t Care” and it saying that no one has an opinion about Barack Obama on Twitter (I find this hard to believe).
But if you search just Obama, it looks like more realistic results (it was like a 60:40 split between positive and negative).
Anyways, I think it is a great idea and a great discussion starter. Just thought I would point out some wonky results. Thanks again!
Some results are good, some are funny, some are just plain ridiculous.
However I think you need to finetune your search algorithm where it concerns one word searches.
Why?
I do think that lawyers from google, yahoo or bing might slap you with a mighty lawsuit when seeing the following results:
Conclusion: The internet is mainly positive on the subject of incest, according to Google.
Conclusion: Even the internet is not quite sure about rape, according to Yahoo.
Conclusion: The internet is mainly positive on the subject of torture, according to Bing.
@2: A lawsuit? Really? You do realise whatdoestheinternethink.net would win that lawsuit, right?
It’s a good introduction to the topic of Social Media monitoring! Nobody’s going to take the data too seriously but it’s certainly a useful free tool.
Many thanks!!
Really now. The Internet thinks Adolf Hitler and pedophiles are the new craze.
I’m wondering how much the bubble Bing puts you in might affect the quality of your searches? Google puts you in a bubble as well, though DuckDuckGo doesn’t. However, their crawler bots won’t return as many hits on all the random phrases, I fear.
Is this doing actual semantic sentiment analysis or is it just counting Google results?
A bit of both, actually