Number of Searches as an Indicator
“Over the past five weeks, there’s been a 42% increase in the number of Internet searches involving the phrase “homes for sale,” according to Hitwise, a firm which measures Web traffic.”
According to the author of this article, the increase in number of searches is a representation of interest. This interest, however, might be tied to fear versus growth or improvement.
Maybe I’m missing the point but this is seriously misguided. An increase in searches doesn’t seem like it would directly translate to positive real world action. It might translate to real world interest and activity, but to make the leap to the conclusion that the real estate market is getting better seems plain wrong to me.
August 31st, 2006 at 4:12 pm
I too am tempted to start using search data for non-search related analysis. In fact, I’ve written two articles about how one might use Google Trends data to make investment decisions.
http://www.investorgeeks.com/articles/2006/08/28/google-trends-can-it-help-me-in-the-stock-market/
http://www.investorgeeks.com/articles/2006/08/30/google-trends-on-sp-bbby-and-amzn/
In my analysis, I’ve been struggling with what it actually means that more people are searching for “new home sales” or “books” or “texas roadhouse”.
Does the fact that no less than 3 real estate search engines have been released in the past 3 months have anything to do with the increased “interest”? Could Google’s release of Google Books which requires you search for ” book” account for an increase in searches with the word “book” in it? Why have searches for “book” gone down over the past year despite this? Is there some use of “texas roadhouse” that isn’t attributed to the new restaurant chain?
The data is out there. It can obviously be used for a lot of useful purposes. Of course it can also be abused. We should be careful.
September 5th, 2006 at 3:48 am
Hey guys,
I find this all very interesting - I have been thinking about this for years.
See this article I wrote a while back:
http://www.yarone.com/articles/BuzzTrendsWebdataovertime.html
Best,
Yarone