Google Trends & Microstock

I'm often curious to see trends on Google Trends, and also curious to see what I can gather from this site to better position my photography focus in future shots.  Hunting around for some various terms I came across some interesting comparisons.

General Market

Getty vs Corbis vs Microstock - Corbis seems to have been overtaken in this metric by istock around mid 2007.

Getty (red) vs Corbis (purple) vs Microstock (blue:istock, green: shutterstock, yellow: Fotolia)

Microstock Battle - istock seems to be declining slightly since the end of 2008, Fotolia seems to have a continuing upward trend, while Shutterstock seems to have had a plateau in 2009, with a spike in searches at the beginning of 2010.

Microstock Trends (blue: iStock, yellow: Fotolia , red: Shutterstock , green: Dreamstime, purple: 123rf)

Some Other Interesting Photo Topics:

Royalty Free versus Creative Commons
Film versus digital
Selling Photos versus Buying Photos

The searches above aren't exact by any means, but an interesting exercise none the less to gather a snap shot on topics.  Something to keep an eye on for ideas and research.

The Top 100 Photography Blogs

In my daily searching today I came across this site listing (and summarizing) their Top 100 Photography Blogs. Quite a good list in my opinion and there were a few on there that I hadn't heard of before or that peaked my interest.  I have over 30 photoblogs that I keep track of every day, but far from reading every new post that comes in I'll scan through the RSS feeds through Google Reader.

A few that peaked my interest were:

• Fine Art Photoblog: On this blog, you’ll get to see fine art photography as well as news in the industry.
• Cheapshooter: Cheapshooter will help you learn how to do photography on a budget.
• Photopreneur: Get great information about making money from your photos through this blog.
• Microstock Diaries: Learn how to make money from microstock photography by reading this blog.