Welcome to the Chicago Trends Scoreboard, brought to you by Logical Media Group! Based out of the historic River North neighborhood, our agency holds firm to the belief that we live and work in the greatest city on earth. Therefore, each week we’ll dig into the data provided by Google Trends (a free tool!) and social media outlets to showcase the topics trending among Chicagoans. We’ll also provide any relevant links to content surrounding those topics around the internet that might be of interest to our neighbors around town. We’d love feedback about our scoreboard, please contact kevin.hughes@logicalmediagroup.com with any questions or comments. Check the bottom of the post for some additional information about how we gather and interpret this data.
Foo Fighters in the Windy City
This week the Windy City is preparing for legendary front man Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters to perform a sold out show at Wrigley Field. “Believe me,” Grohl said in a Chicago Tribune interview on Tuesday, “I wake up every day and can’t believe this is my job. And the fact that I get to do it with people I actually love in places like Wrigley Field?” This will be the first show for the Fighters in The Friendly Confines since 2014. In addition to searches for ticket sales, it seems as fans of the band are using search to try and sneak an early peek at the set lists and reconnect with their favorite hits on YouTube before the show.
Rizzo at the Pitchers Mound
Speaking of Wrigley Field, the Cubs were predictably trendy in the city this week, coming off of a 3-2 win in a dramatic five-game series in the North Side over the weekend. Kyle Schwarber summed it up perfectly to MLB.com; “It shows the resilience of this team and we’re not afraid to be down and fight, scratch or claw our way back into the game,” Schwarber said. “That’s been our M.O. this season. If we’re down, we know we’re not out.”
If a series win over a rival weren’t enough, fans were treated to the added bonus of seeing first baseman Anthony Rizzo make his MLB pitching debut in a 7-1 blowout loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks on Monday night. Rizzo only threw two pitches with one recorded out. He reportedly never wants to pitch again. Social Media accounts across the country were as excited about the moment as we were:
Chicago’s Newest Pop-Up Bar
Bar patrons of Chicagoland aren’t superstitious, but they may now have reason to be a little stitious. Google Trends tells us that over the last seven days fans of the legendary NBC sitcom “The Office” have been searching about the rumored new pop-up bar opening in Lincoln Park themed after the show.” You’ll be able to drink a cocktail from your own “World’s Greatest Boss” mug, though no official word on whether or not a Dundie is included with the purchase of an appetizer.
Race to Mackinac
An annual tradition in Chicago unfortunately ended tragically this year during the Chicago Yacht Club Race to Mackinac. As reports began to surface of a sailor lost overboard on Lake Michigan, locals came together across the internet to offer support and gather information. Friends of John Santarelli describe him as “The Swiss Army Knife of Friends,” and a lover of good times in a moving piece from the Chicago Tribune.
The Best Street Festival of the Summer
There is no shortage of festivals, street fairs, outdoor expos and summer specific activities for Chicagoans to enjoy on any given week (we do our relaxing in the winter). Google Trends paints us a picture of a constantly shifting search landscape in which consumers of Chicago culture fiendishly hunt for the scoop on the best party of the weekend. Last weekend (7/19-7/21) included big name festivals like Pitchfork, and some breakout search traffic for smaller events; Pilsen Taco Fest and The Tacos & Tamales Festival (Chicago is a taco town, but is it a sandwich?). As I’m writing this on hump day (7/25) the focus seems to have shifted to the popular Wicker Park Festival.
Dubbed “Chicago’s Best Street Festival of the Summer,” by the Tribune, Wicker Park Festival “reflects the neighborhoods rich musical heritage, vibrant nightlife, and acclaimed restaurants.” With a dynamite music lineup, craft beer for days, and the fashion shows featuring the trendiest designers in the city, party seekers are canvassing the web for details in preparation for the weekend.
Following the Marathons
Tracking trends isn’t possible without tracking selfies on Instagram, people love taking them, especially when being active. We’re not judging, flex on! Over the weekend the city hosted the Rock & Roll Half Marathon (sponsored by Potatoes?), and participants flocked to Instagram to share pictures, training stories, and personal glory with their followers. It’s worth noting that many of the posts also referenced the upcoming Bank of America Chicago Marathon, another popular instagram tag in the city right now. We tracked these popular hashtags using instagram’s handy trends section. For more information on using instagram, we at Logical Media Group happen to have a handy guide.
That’s it for the debut of the Chicago Trends Scoreboard, but that doesn’t mean it won’t get bigger and better! We’d love to get your feedback, or answer any questions about how to access the data freely available to anyone on Google Trends.
How to Read the Data:
Our Trends Scoreboard isn’t an exact science, but we do utilize the really helpful tool from our friends at Google to determine what’s popular in the city. By entering some test search terms related to the city or current events we’re able to gather rough estimates of the search popularity of certain events in Chicago around the internet. Social media platforms provide their own tools for tracking trends that we evaluate. For any questions about how to use these tools, give us a shout! See below for more detail on interpreting Google Trends data.
Related topics
Users searching for a certain term also searched for these topics. To gather information we would enter terms like “Chicago” or “Events in Chicago” into trends and researched search data around the results.
The searches are organized by the following metrics:
* Top – The most popular topics. Scoring is on a relative scale where a value of 100 is the most commonly searched topic and a value of 50 is a topic searched half as often as the most popular term, and so on.
* Rising – Related topics with the biggest increase in search frequency since the last time period. Results marked “Breakout” had a tremendous increase, probably because these topics are new and had few (if any) prior searches.
Related queries
You can sort by the following metrics:
* Top – The most popular search queries. Scoring is on a relative scale where a value of 100 is the most commonly searched query, 50 is a query searched half as often as the most popular query, and so on.
* Rising – Queries with the biggest increase in search frequency since the last time period. Results marked “Breakout” had a tremendous increase, probably because these queries are new and had few (if any) prior searches.
