If you don’t do any keyword optimization for search engines (or even know what that is, for goodness sakes) you’re probably unaware that Overture (Yahoo’s company for adding paid search) has a little tool that tells you how many times a certain terms/words were searched for on Yahoo for a close-in-proximity previous month. (If you click on that little tool link, please note it takes a LONG time to appear and do searches.)

So according to this tool, how many of you ARE looking for chocolate?

Searches for Chocolate over the Past 3 Years
There’s also a nifty little tool put out by Google that tells you about search trends. The tool displays a graph showing the trends over the last 3 years of how many people have been searching for a particular subject, and then reflects the high points in the graph with major news articles that could respond to those spikes (or cause them – such as “spinach” was recently searched a lot because of the ecoli scare). Down below the graph, it tells you who’s doing the most searches on those subjects (by cities, regions or languages). (Round the page down to just one country using the pull-down in the upper right hand portion of the page)

So who else is looking for chocolate?

Top 10 Cities Searching for Chocolate
1. Auckland, New Zealand
2. Melbourne, Australia
3. New York, NY, USA
4. San Francisco, CA, USA
5. Portland, OR, USA
6. Denver, CO, USA
7. Philadelphia, PA, USA
8. Chicago, IL, USA
9. Seattle, WA, USA
10. Boston, MA, USA

I also noticed an interesting trend of chocolate peaks in mid-summer as well as around the holidays. So, did you find my page because YOU’RE thinking about chocolate? Just as a side note, you can enter multiple terms into Google Trends and compare them over time. For example Chocolate and Candy – it’s interesting how many of the spikes in the search numbers overtime are similar.

You’ll find Glazies in side a large building called “The Corner” which includes a Hogi Yogi and a Teriyaki Stix. This building was built in 2003 where an old Winchells stood. (Nice to see they replaced a donut place with another one, isn’t it?) Parking here is pretty tricky, and tight.

Glazies Donuts (in Orem)
“Parkway Crossing” (Just west of the University Parkway exit, enter off Geneva Road)
1270 W. 1130 S.
Orem, UT 84058
Google Map
(801) 789-3765

You’ll find this Glazies included in a student housing complex called Parkway Crossing. The development is only a couple years old and viewable from the freeway. Turn right on Geneva just past the Chevron, and then take your next right into the complex. Glazies is on the South Side.

• Bite-sized chocolate candies are the post popular type of candy to be included in Halloween activities (76 percent), followed by bite-sized non-chocolate candies (30 percent).
• Twenty-six percent of households will include full-size candy (chocolate and non-chocolate) in their Halloween activities.
• Kids tell us that their favorite treats to receive when trick-or-treating are candy and gum. Eighty-four percent of kids said candy and gum are their favorites.
  • Chocolate preferred by 50 percent
  • Non-chocolate candy, 24 percent
  • Gum, 10 percent
• Kids’ least favorite items to get in their trick-or-treat bags were fruit and salty snacks like chips and pretzels.
  • Fruit, 1 percent
  • Salty snacks, 1 percent
  • Toys, 2 percent
  • Baked goods such as cookies/granola bars, 2 percent
  • Other, 2 percent
  • Don’t know, 5 percent
  • Don’t trick-or-treat, 3 percent
• Ninety percent of parents admit to sneaking goodies from their kids’ Halloween trick-or-treat bags.
• Parents favorite treats to sneak from their kids’ trick-or-treat bags are snack-size chocolate bars (70 percent sneak these), candy-coated chocolate pieces (40 percent), caramels (37 percent) and gum (26 percent).
• Parents least favorite goodie to take from their kids’ trick-or-treat bags is licorice (18 percent).
• When kids ages 6-11 years old eat candy, they prefer chocolate candy two-to-one over candy that doesn’t contain any chocolate.
• Kids ages 6-11 years old say if they were given lots of candy, they would
  • Share some with their family, 66 percent
  • Share the candy with their friends, 64 percent
  • Give some to their teacher, 26 percent
  • Keep it all for themselves, 7 percent
  • Don’t know what they would do, 2 percent

So I was over at Walmart tonight (a place I call affectionately “Wally world” since it sounds as circus-like as the store itself) and picked up a big bag of Halloween candy (Holy cow man, $8?). For the costumed kiddies come this Tuesday you might ask? Well, actually no, it’s for me. Since last year I got ONE trick-or-treater at my door, I don’t expect to get too many this year. I plan on consuming at least half the bag myself.

Mmmm. Swedish Fish… (as I dig into the bowl of candy)… Yum!

BTW, do kids still trick-or-treat in 2006? Or is it just my neighborhood that seems to have boycotted it? I remember that the local mall use to have a trick-or-treat, and the kids would go from store to store to get all their goodies. Perhaps giving away candy on Halloween could be encorporated into Tweet Sweet’s event plans?

Already common in Europe, this system brings to the industry a uniformity praised by bakers and chocolate experts. But they also worry that too few people understand it and are being misled by marketers pushing bigger-is-better attitudes. The article includes a guide to what cacao labeling can and can’t tell you, and what it means for the home cook.

In brief:
For eating, stick to less than 70 percent cacao. Because sugar tempers and enhances the flavor and texture of chocolate, bars with higher ratios can taste bitter and chalky.

For baking, chocolates be-tween 40 percent and 70 percent will work best in most conventional recipes. Chocolates above 70 percent may have textural problems in some recipes, such as a chocolate mousse cake.

If you can’t resist high cacao chocolate, use recipes specially formulated for it. Scharffen Berger, for example, has recipes on its Web site developed for its bars, including double chocolate cookies that use the company’s 99 percent cacao chocolate.

Don’t want to think about numbers? Stick within the 40 percent to 50 percent range for a good all-purpose chocolate.

For the full story click here.

Now if you haven’t heard this story running around the web over the past couple months, then you aren’t a true lover of all things chocolate. (No I’m not going to blog or link to the fella that got stuck in a vat of chocolate – just not appetizing.)

Workers at the luxury chocolate company discovered a 2-inch tall column of chocolate drippings under one of their vats that bears a striking resemblance to the Virgin Mary. Can you see it? Look closer…

Makes me wonder if that same online gambling place (something “palace’ to give you a hint) that did some strange things during the Olympics and then bought the Virgin Mary grilled cheese sandwich that would never rot will snatch this little jewell up. And unlike the chocolate boyfriend who I mentioned in an earlier post, please leave Mary’s head in tact thank you very much.