Earlier today, I was reading information regarding Google Trends. The theme was that one can predict future trends by following Google keyword search terms (i.e Boston condos for sale).
But how reliable is search data in predicting future trends? Google research team has spent a great deal of time condsidering this. As the team noted in its blog:
Having predictable trends for a search query or for a group of queries could have interesting ramifications. One could forecast the trends into the future…
In its paper Predicting the Present with Google Trends, the team found that “Google Trends data can help improve forecasts of the current level of activity for a number of different economic time series, including automobile sales, home sales and travel behavior.”
I thought it would be interesting to put to test the Google Analytic Prediction Theory.
1. First, which word or term should we use. Example Boston luxury condos.
2. What dates should we select. Example April 2009 – April 2010.
3. Should we use “mortgage information” as keywords to be our prediction for future activity?
Any thoughts or suggestions?
