Google Searches As Investment Guide?
Over at TechCrunch, MG Siegler writes about a new tool in Google Finance called “Google Domestic Trends“:
Basically, it allows you to look at various sectors of the U.S. economy based on how they are performing in Google’s search index. The idea is that the volume of searches for related queries to a specific segment “may provide unique economic insight,” says Google.
Or may not. The example Siegler cites, retail sales, offers mixed results. If you compare actual retail sales from January 2008 through May 2009 to predicted retail sales:
The results predicted with the Google Retail Index (GRI) are clearly closer than the predictions made without it.
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