What Data Am I Looking At?

A few days ago, I came across a post on Discernible Preferences where the blog’s author posted two search trend graphs, and removed the value of the search term. The spikes of search volume were slightly different between the United States and the United Kingdom.

Out of curiosity, I went back to the post today and followed a link in the comments to the Hacker News discussion containing the answer.

In retrospect, it seems more obvious. A good little puzzle nonetheless, and it got me wondering when it will be more typical to see these search trend puzzles in a more serious evaluative context.