Comparative Searches about Art and Media

Google NGram Viewer is a free tool that lets you compare how many times a given term is mentioned in books. It's one way to gauge how public interest in a given subject has changed over time.

There have been a lot of books and articles about watercolor in the last 40 years. Below, the up-and-down bumps in the watercolor line reflect the seasonal cycles of popular interest in painting.

These graphs are just one indication of popularity, though. You can also search Google Trends, which compares search traffic over time, though the timescale of computer searches is short compared to the life of the published word.