How to find stats for general trends of programming language popularity using google trends

Question

I like to keep an eye on trending browsers/OSs/languages etc... I find google trends is a very useful resource sometimes but other times I can not get the information I want.

Example of very clear increase of Ubuntu (with 6 monthly peaks near release dates) compared with other major linux distros ecline over the years...

http://www.google.com/trends?q=ubuntu%2C+debian%2C+redhat%2C+mandrake&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

Example of results that are skewed because of non-programming related events. See "flash floods" and "earthquake in Java" in the news results

http://www.google.com/trends?q=flash%2C+java%2C+javascript&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

Is there a way to filter the results better to only include Java the programming language, and make sure that it catches all variations of a name - for example js instead of javascript, or an alternative tool that can produce similar graphical trend data.

Answer 1

It is possible to exclude terms with a minus sign and use | for variants:

flash -flood, java -crash -quake, javascript +js

But if you want accuracy it would be better to use the Language Popularity Index (or Tiobe as Bas suggests).

Answer 2

Such "metrics" have questionable value (but are fun to discuss). You could add a word like "program" to each language: http://www.google.com/trends?q=flash+program%2C+java+program%2C+javascript+program&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=1