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 want.
Example of very clear increase of Ubuntu (with 6 monthly peaks near release dates) compared with other major linux distros ecline over the years...
http://www.google.com/trends?q=ubuntu%2C+debian%2C+redhat%2C+mandrake&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
Example of results that are skewed because of non-programming related events. See "flash floods" and "earthquake in Java" in the news results
http://www.google.com/trends?q=flash%2C+java%2C+javascript&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
Is there a way to filter the results better to only include Java the programming language, and make sure that it catches all variations of a name - for example js instead of javascript, or an alternative tool that can produce similar graphical trend data.
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).
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
来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7391419/how-to-find-stats-for-general-trends-of-programming-language-popularity-using-go