I have been playing around with Google Insights for Search lately. It’s a nifty tool that allows you to compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties. The search results are presented in a textual manner, but there is also a map representation allowing you to drill down on regions and countries.
An explorer’s and system thinker’s walhalla! It didn’t take long before I found myself throwing some testing-related lingo at it:
I wonder what happens when “Software testing” is thrown into the mix?
Mmm… and what about “Agile testing”?
wOOt! “Testing conference”?
This can’t be. Let’s try ISTQB…
Same old, same old. Is this some kind of caching problem? Let’s park the testing stuff and throw in Alaska’s finest, “Sarah Palin”.
Okay, this actually makes sense. Let’s zoom in on the US. Drill baby, drill!
And sure enough, the top number of searches comes from the place she could see Russia from on a clear day.
Google Insights wasn’t messing with me. It’s real. The highest search volumes of almost all software testing-related terms seem to come out of India. Look who’s on a quest for knowledge.
Are Indian testers heavier google-users than the average Westerner? Is that because other sources of testing-related information are lacking? I’d love to hear the opinion of Indian testers on this.
Although this trend is remarkable, it’s not surprising. If the nature of many Indian testing blogs is something to go by, a lot of Indian testers *are* inquisitive and critical. It’s the birthplace of Weekend Testing, too. And the sapient tester virus is spreading rapidly: if you take a look at the blogs of Ajay Balamuragadas, Dhanasekar S, Parimala Shankaraiah, Pradeep Soundararajan, Shrini Kulkarni, Manoj Nair, Debasis Pradhan, Santhosh Tuppad, Sharath Byregowda, Mohit Verma, Jaswinder Kaur Nagi, Santosh Shukla, Nandagopal and Madhukar Jain, their enthousiasm and sheer passion for the craft are contagious.
I like the way many of them are taking skill development into their own hands. Bhārat, the home of continuous learning and improvement!
I wonder how long it would take to put Belgium on that Google Insights testing map. I’m afraid this won’t be happening anytime soon – but I’m pretty confident that we will get the term “governmental crisis” up there in a heartbeat.
Test Side Story 
