It is interesting to note the trending in hits on certain search criteria. Internet usage in general has gone up over the years. And there has been an increase in information available on the internet on various subjects. So the idea that almost anything was trending up until 2004 is not necessarily a significant thing.
One of the "un-telling" things for me is the lack of actual numbers. I see a graph with a series of peaks and valleys, and an overall trend. The only place that I have any kind of evidence of at least relative numbers is when they juxtapose Lee's graph against Tim Keller. While significantly different, does it tell of a huge difference that is relative to the size of its following compared to Keller? Hard to say.
So what do trends mean?
In the early days, lots of trends were up because more and more people were busy trying to find sites and information that they had never looked to the internet for before. As they find steady sources of information, they bookmark them, never to make that particular search again — unless they decide to look for additional or alternative source. So peaking in 2004 might not be a completely unexpected thing.
News. How many hits do you think there were on the Ebola virus a year ago? Six months ago? A year from now? I expect that those three graph points will show an increase followed by a decrease. Go to many search engines, especially their "front-ends" that accumulate news of various general categories and you will find references to what is trending today. When I bother to look at the list at all, I am sometimes surprised to find a person's name that I would not expect, such as an actor that has not been in anything for some time and has not been outspoken on politics, the environment, etc. I take a look and sure enough, someone tried to break into their house, so there is some current news about them. Or they are marrying or divorcing.
What news could have people looking into Witness Lee or Watchman Nee back around 2004? Harvest House? And while this might be more internal, what about the controversies surrounding the ouster of Titus Chu? I know it wasn't in 2004. But it could have been at least part of the reason for some of the lesser peaks.
What about new items? Was Tim Keller a big name prior to 2008 when he wrote his first significant book? He had been the pastor of a major Presbyterian church in NYC for many years, but was he known outside of that much prior to his book? Mean time, how do you think hits on Elvis has gone in recent years? Probably a roller coaster since he died many years before the internet was generally accessible.
And to the extent that it was heavily searches by the insiders, what if the warnings to avoid the internet were beginning to have effect? They taper off based on the advice that you can only be poisoned by the internet (except for the LSM sites which should already be bookmarked).
And while there are surely many other possibilities, there is also the practice (that I forget the name for) of searching for something over and over and selecting the "correct" site(s) so that they will rise to the top of searches. And while that could be a difficult task for something with millions of searches a month, it would probably be easy for swaying the outcome of hits on searches for Lee, Nee, and the LSM if you were wanting to do that. And I'm sure that they do.
The thing to me is that the data, whether huge in volume, or small, is insufficiently tied to anything to provide a meaning in terms of importance. Any of those I mention could be responsible for the overall trends, or even just some of the small ups and downs. But it is difficult to say much at all when the numbers appear so small. And with the tendency for groups to make the URL for their web site available — in emails, bulletins, etc. — there is often a diminishing need for people to seek the site for the things they will commonly go to. I mean, I might end out seeking for a particular store's website near Christmas or a birthday and not maintain it in my favorites. But I am also just about as likely to just guess and type in
www.bestbuy.com, and even if that is not the actual name, it will probably redirect me to it. Only if I can't find it will I go searching. I am more likely to be searching for the chords and lyrics to a song than for another religious website. I have existing favorites and they link to others. (And some of them even link to sites that are very different — even somewhat adverse — so I find that I am typically getting a lot of perspective without doing Google or Yahoo searches.