Debunking the Atlas Moment

Interesting results from tracking Google searches for Karl Marx vs. Ayn Rand. In the chart below, Marx is blue, Rand is red. The orange line is a baseline search for recession:

Results suggest that the Atlas moment might not be so momentous. 

The cycles on the Marx hits match up neatly with university schedules—people are googling Marx for class, not so much on Ayn Rand.

Here are the exact search terms:

For Marx, we'll use all of the following terms: "Das Kapital", "Das Capital", "Communist Manifesto", Marxism, Communism, "Karl Marx", "Carl Marx". For Rand, we'll use: "Atlas Shrugged", Objectivism, "Ayn Rand", "Ann Rand", "The Fountainhead", "Virtue of Selfishness", "John Galt". I think that's a reasonably comprehensive list of terms folks would be looking for, but feel free to try your own variations. If you include only Marx, be sure to run the "-Groucho, -Richard,—"Marx Brothers"" and so on.

A previous quickie version of this comparison from the same blog has made the rounds on the Internet and generated some interesting discussion, but today's version offers cleaner results.