How to find stats for general trends of programming language popularity using google trends

Question

I like to keep an eye on trending browsers/OSs/languages etc... I find google trends is a very useful resource sometimes but other times I can not get the information I

Answer 1

Such "metrics" have questionable value (but are fun to discuss). You could add a word like "program" to each language: http://www.google.com/trends?q=flash+program%2C+java+program%2C+javascript+program&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=1

Answer 2

It is possible to exclude terms with a minus sign and use | for variants:

flash -flood, java -crash -quake, javascript +js

But if you want accuracy it would be better to use the Language Popularity Index (or Tiobe as Bas suggests).