Gossip Machine is Fun, but Double Stuff Gossip Machine is Even More Fun.
The first version of Gossip Machine let you analyze Wikipedia article page views to find dates with unusually high traffic and turn those dates into Google News searches.
Double-Stuff Gossip Machine lets you analyze TWO pages, find days with high page views which those pages have in common, and turn those days into Google News searches.
Enter two Wikipedia page topics that you want to analyze, then choose the year’s worth of page views you want to analyze (options range from 2016 to this year) and how much higher a day’s page views have to be over normal before that day is considered a newsy day. Both pages will be analyzed and any newsy days they have in common will be translated to a date-specific Google News search and added to a list. that list will appear under the “Fire Up the Gossip Machine” button.
If the two pages have no newsy days in common the list will be empty!
Things I have tried that are interesting:
- Musicians / Celebrities in the Same Space (Doja Cat / Megan Thee Stallion, Jinkx Monsoon / RuPaul)
- Tech Executives and Tech Topics (Mark Zuckerberg / Cambridge Analytica) or two tech topics (blockchain / cryptocurrency)
- Politicians or people ancillary to politics and events/topics they’re associated with (Rudy Giuliani / Ukraine, Gavin Newsom / Covid)
Remember that the year you’re searching will have a big impact on your search results. Searching for Ryan Zinke and Yellowstone might find something in 2018 or 2019, but wouldn’t find anything from the last couple of years. Note also that if you choose a page that didn’t exist in the year you’re searching the search will break. Megan Thee Stallion, for example, didn’t have a Wikipedia page until 2018 so any searches for her in 2016 and 2017 will fail.
