README.md

metadata

license: cc-by-4.0
pretty_name: '''Flock camera'' — how a surveillance brand name entered US search'
tags:
  - google-trends
  - surveillance
  - search-trends

"Flock camera" — how a surveillance brand name entered US search

Google Trends aggregates covering how the American public learned the phrase "Flock camera": a 53-week US interest-over-time series comparing three names for the same technology, a 51-state regional breakdown, and the complete rising and top related-query sets (9 and 25 rows — not selections). Snapshot 2026-07-27.

Companion to the study "Flock Camera" Searches Just Hit a 12-Month High. "License Plate Reader" Never Moved.

Headline findings

• A brand name beat the technology's real name, by roughly 50 to 1. US search interest in Flock camera sat flat between 1 and 4 for 36 consecutive weeks (2025-07-27 → 2026-03-29), broke that ceiling on 2026-04-12, and reached 100 — its 12-month peak — in the week of 2026-07-26. Over the same 53 weeks, license plate reader, the generic name for the same device, never once exceeded 2.
• The public is still at the definition stage. All 9 of 9 rising related queries are asking what the thing is, led by "what is a flock camera and what does it do" at +950%. None concerns privacy law, contracts, or removal.
• Then it wants a map. The two highest-volume related queries are tied at the ceiling — flock map (100) and flock camera map (100) — with flock camera locations (19), flock cameras map (8) and flock camera near me (5) behind them.
• The geography inverts the news coverage. Interest is highest in West Virginia (100), Arkansas (57), Kentucky (55), Idaho (53) and North Dakota (52); lowest in Hawaii (17), New York (18), DC (20), New Jersey (22) and California (24) — despite California and the Northeast generating a large share of national reporting.
• Nothing in either query set is about interfering with equipment. Across all 25 distinct queries, the nearest is deflock (top, value 4) — a camera-mapping project.

Files

File	Contents
data/summary.json	Full aggregate: pull parameters, per-keyword peaks and baselines, region extremes, query-set counts and caveats
data/interest-over-time-weekly.csv	53 weekly points, US, today 12-m, for Flock Safety, license plate reader and Flock camera on one shared scale
data/interest-by-region.csv	51 rows (50 states + DC), US, today 3-m, Flock camera
data/related-queries.csv	Complete rising (9) and top (25) related-query sets, US, today 3-m, Flock camera

Methodology

Pulled live on 2026-07-27 via Crawlora's Google Trends endpoints: google_trends_explore_interest_over_time (geo=US, time_range=today 12-m, web search, all three keywords in one call), google_trends_explore_interest_by_region, google_trends_explore_rising_queries and google_trends_explore_top_queries (each geo=US, time_range=today 3-m, keyword Flock camera).

The DeFlock figures in summary.json (121,464 LPRs mapped; 94 cities listed as rejecting) were scraped from deflock.org's front page the same day via Crawlora's web_scrape endpoint.

Caveats — please read before using

• Google Trends values are relative, not search counts. A value of 100 means "the highest point in this particular pull," not a volume.
• Only the three interest-over-time keywords are comparable to each other. They were requested in a single call, so Trends normalized them onto one shared 0-100 scale — which is what makes "100 versus never above 2" a valid statement. The region series is a separate call on its own 0-100 scale (100 = highest state) and must not be compared against the time-series numbers.
• Flock is a polluted query term (birds, the former browser, flock printing, church usage). This shows up in the data: what is a flock appears in both query sets and is certainly not all ALPR intent. The paired terms (flock camera, flock camera map) are the cleaner signal.
• Region data is interest, not deployment. A state ranking high means people there searched the term relatively more, not that it has more cameras.
• related_topics returned empty for this keyword — no error, simply no mapped topic entity. It is not included here.
• The DeFlock numbers are the project's own self-reported counts, not an independently audited census, and they change continuously.
• This is a snapshot of a moving story. The finding that 100% of rising queries are definitional is specific to the three months ending 2026-07-27 and is expected to change as the topic matures.

Scope

These are aggregates only: search-interest values and query strings. No personal data, no user-level records, and nothing tied to any individual.

License

CC BY 4.0 — free to use with attribution to Crawlora. See CITATION.cff.