The above chart shows the long term global Google Trends for keyword gold for both search volume and news reference volume.
The top table showing search volume is based on relative scaling meaning that the data is scaled to the average search traffic for your term (represented as 1.0).
The spikes from mid 2008 and Q1 2010 are both misleading in that they coincide with The Olympics and account for frequent mention of the term gold medal.
The current and prolonged increase in search volume is by far the largest ever and also shows that global searches for the term have increased much more than news references. Thus, despite the sharp increase of media focus, broader public interest appears to far surpass it.
$GLD $GC_F