Why was everyone expecting the iPhone 5? Was it because journalists and bloggers were picking up on Google search trends and writing the stories that people wanted to hear?

Have a glance at this chart showing three years of search traffic (click for a live version) 

In previous years, search traffic has more or less followed the announcement – but for the (still mythical) iPhone 5, search traffic began to grow well ahead of time (a situation — as Scott Thompson has pointed out to me — probably only exacerbated by the delayed announcement.)

Bloggers and journalists are increasingly using social signals (search & twitter volume) to determine their editorial policy. After all, search and social are a good indicator of what interests your audience – and major traffic drivers.

In this case, however, the process created a vicious feedback loop. Even the more sensible commentators and analysts found that — when the conversation was about the iPhone 5, there was no virtue or value in writing about it in any other way.

I used Google to count the posts that mentioned “iPhone 5” in the title on some of the top tech blogs, MSM and online news sources — the numbers tell a story.