Following on from my own Playing With Google Search Data Trends, and John’s Google’s predictive power (contd.) pick up on this post from Bill Thompson, The net reveals the ties that bind, here’s one possible quick look at the impending state of the recession…
What search terms would you say are recession indicators?
PS I wonder to what extent, if any, the financial wizards factor real time “search intent” tracking into their stock trading strategies?
PPS I have to admit, I don’t really understand the shape of this trend at all?
The minima around Christmas look much of a muchness, but the New Year pear – and then the yearly average, are increasing, year on year? Any ideas?
OUseful.Info, the blog... 
It’s interesting to select a year view for 2007 and 2008: you see that the search has occured in Polish as well as English. So there could be an increasing population using the internet to search for Job Centres! Looking at the cities the search originates from seems much of a muchness from year to year.
I suspect it’s more to do with the fact that people are becoming increasingly familliar with the internet as an information source – not higher levels of unemployment!
“Looking at the cities the search originates from seems much of a muchness from year to year.”
I think the cities are misleading? I suspect they are ISP hubs, rather than searcher locations?
“I suspect it’s more to do with the fact that people are becoming increasingly familliar with the internet as an information source – not higher levels of unemployment!”
Okay – reasonable assumption; but why then are the searches for eg “redundancy notice” pretty flat until 2009?
To get a feeling for any Polish effect, what terms would you look for? “flights Poland”? “Polish food”? “Polish Church”?
They’re all pretty flat, except for flights, which appears to be descreasing?