Google’s recession indicator: Barometer

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Google: “The economy is evolving. And the current recession is the first in which the massive consumer is online and use the Internet to search for information about products and services. Google gives you insight into the general mood on the internet, based on searches carried out by large numbers of people executed. Do these search trends consistent with macro-economic indicators?

Well…Google Barometer is a new service from Google to help brands and company’s to anticipate on the mood of the consumers and the economic situation. It is a statistics service geared for the Dutch market, showing a historical graph of search patterns per category, such as travel, cars, mortgages, jobs or shopping.

The service compares economical indicators with data from search queries/keywords and their popularity and quantity within Google Search. Google claims it can show the state of the local economy. What is actually does is that it checks the number of search queries in Google. These numbers are combined with other data from Insights for Search (Google database about people’s search behavior).It allows to track changes in sentiments against other key indices including inflation, unemployment and interest rates, as well as relevant news stories.

Google Barometer comparing the carmarket index with the shopping index

For example: Travel agencies could compare the willingness of consumers to buy with the popularity and quantity of keywords that have something to do with holidays. Depending on those results a travel agency could adjust their offerings in their (Adwords) campaigns.

Google is delivering a free service what gives realistic impressions about the local economy and it effect on it’s consumers. But as always there are always higher purposes: One of those is getting businesses to use more Adwords campaigns.

You can try it here (Dutch): Google Barometer