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Wednesday, March 11, 2009

How is this economy impacting us emotionally?

Curious as to the latest search trends or what’s on peoples minds these days.

Google Insight will let you determine just that. It is a great little tool I use often when doing various research projects for my classes at NYU or for my clients.

For example, with Google Insight, you can see the obvious seasonal trends in various search words like "roses" or "pumpkin pie." But more interesting is looking for new and unexpected search trends and the relationships between them.

Searches involving the words "bankruptcy" or "foreclosure" are certainly on the rise over the past 12 months as revealed by Google Insight. Not a surprise.

In addition, searches involving words like "budget planner" are on the rise. Certainly makes sense.

But what was a surprise to me was finding that searches on words like "divorce law" are dramatically down over the same time period. I would have thought that during these tough times, thoughts of divorce might have been on the rise. But I guess I was wrong. Perhaps these bad times bring us closer together. Is this a cause and effect? Maybe. But further research would need to be conducted before we can jump to that conclusion.

Google Insight also creates a heat map for you showing where in the U.S. the search terms are most prominent. For example, when you search for “personal bankruptcy” the Google heat map shows California, Texas and New York as the states searching those terms most. Pretty cool information. I am sure Obama, Clinton and the others in this last presidential race used this data to determine the various hot issues by state. Ya think?

If you have not tried Google Insight take a look. I am sure you will find some applications in your work or personal life. Besides being very useful, it’s just darn fun.

http://www.google.com/insights/search/

Oh, and in case you were unaware, the CDC uses Google Insight to help them pinpoint in which states the flu is likely to outbreak based on searches and queries being made regarding symptoms.

Enjoy,
Perry

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