Following a successful initial collaboration in 2017 with Beautiful in English, Google invited me to brainstorm ideas for a new project. As a passionate animal enthusiast, the topic of pets, particularly how people seek information about them online, immediately stood out. Google concurred, recognizing the potential for valuable insights in exploring pet-related search behaviors.
My primary interest lay in understanding the motivations behind pet owners’ online searches, specifically focusing on unraveling their pets’ behavior. This led to the compilation of approximately 4400 of the most frequently asked questions beginning with “why does/are/is my/a cat(s)/dog(s)”. To analyze this extensive dataset, I employed R to construct two comprehensive “sentence trees”. This visual method facilitated the identification of prevalent themes and questions within the vast collection of search queries.
The project’s presentation begins with an accessible overview of the data, highlighting the four most recurring themes emerging from the questions. Subsequently, users are granted the opportunity to delve deeper into the complete set of roughly 2200 questions for each animal individually. Furthermore, the analysis draws a comparison between the most commonly posed questions in general and those incorporating the possessive pronoun “my,” revealing nuances in search intent. Finally, the project concludes by examining the overall search popularity of cats and dogs in conjunction.
Initially, the detailed explorations of cat and dog queries were intended to be consolidated on a single page. However, the wealth of intriguing discoveries within the dataset necessitated an expansion. As the project progressed and more visual representations were developed, it became evident that splitting the content into multiple pages, accompanied by a general introductory page, would enhance user experience and content clarity.
The captivating animations featured in the project are the creation of Juliana Chen. A comprehensive account of the entire design and development process is available in my blog.
