The two sources
Google Books (printed words)
- What it is
- A count of how often a phrase appears in the books Google has scanned.
- Collection
- English
- Years
- 1900 to 2019
- Smoothing
- 3 — each year is averaged with the three on either side, which is Google's own default and keeps rare phrases from flickering.
- The figure
- A share, not a count: how often the phrase appears among all phrases of the same length that year. The numbers are in the billionths, so shape and order matter, not size.
- Pulled
- —
Google Trends (searched words)
- What it is
- How often people typed the phrase into Google, month by month.
- Scope
- Worldwide and United States, kept separate.
- Years
- —
- The figure
- A score from 0 to 100 against that phrase's own busiest month, never a count of people. Each phrase was asked for on its own, so two phrases' heights do not compare.
- Zero
- Means too rare to report that month, not that nobody searched.
- Places
- Shares of each other across 250 countries and 51 states, capped at 100, with ties common.
- Pulled
- —
These numbers have a shelf life. Google rescales its search figures as new searches come in, so the same question asked next year gives slightly different answers. The date above is part of the finding.
Every phrase asked for
Each phrase was asked for on its own, in quotation marks, so that Google matched the exact wording. Four roles: a Christ wording to compare against, the personal and congregational Jesus wordings, and for Sabbath a fourth with no possessive at all.
| Phrase | Group | Role | Asked as | Books | Search |
|---|
Where Google had nothing to say
For some phrases Google returns no figures at all, rather than a row of zeros. That is a stronger statement than "rare", and the pages say so wherever it happens.
The chronology and the internet figures
The dated chronology
- What it is
- —
- How firm
- —
- Caution
- These are first appearances in sources that survive, which is not the same as first use. Dates side by side are not causes.
Who was online
- Source
- Pew Research Center, internet use among American adults.
- What it is
- —
- Caution
- Survey figures move with when the survey ran and how the question was worded. They cover the United States only, so they explain nothing about search in Ghana, Kenya or the Philippines.
The three periods
- What they are
- —
- Caution
- These are an argument, not a result. They are the study's way of dividing the story into chapters. Nothing in the data detected them, and a different reading would put the lines elsewhere.
What none of this can tell you
Books are not belief. A phrase appearing more often in print means publishers printed it more often. It does not count congregations, sermons or convictions.
Search is not agreement. People search for things they doubt, things they are arguing about, and things they heard once. A rising search figure shows attention, not assent.
Both are English only here, and both are Google's slice of the world: the books it scanned, the searches it logged.
Timing is not cause. The pages place dates beside one another because the order is interesting. Order is not proof.
If a figure on the Jesus is pages cannot be traced back to something on this page, treat that as an error and tell us.
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