Google Trends has something new: a daily Zeitgeist. Google lets you see the 100 queries that had the biggest evolution in a certain day. For now, Google only shows the "hottest" queries in the US, but other countries should follow.
For each query, you can see a graph that shows the popularity of the query, related searches and the top results from Google News, Blog Search and Web Search. These results should explain why the queries are popular.
Like the old Zeitgeist, Google Hot Trends will be an archive of the most important queries. That means you can select a day from the past and see the people, the events, the questions which defined that day.
According to Reuters, "Hot Trends (...) will be refreshed several times daily, using data from millions of Google Web searches conducted up to an hour before each update".
The list for May 21 includes two very long and improbable queries:
* #26: [what did lawyer ellis rubin suggest prison inmates could donate in exchange for reduction in their sentences in 1992]
* #90: [who was the first new world explorer to take a dip in the springs of what's now hot springs arkansas]
... and is topped by Avandia, a drug prescribed to treat diabetes that was found to increase the risk of heart attacks.