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Aggregating Google Trends: Multivariate Testing and Analysis

Stephen L. France, Yuying Shi

arXiv 8 Dec 2017 · Econometrics · 3 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:1712.03152 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

Web search data are a valuable source of business and economic information. Previous studies have utilized Google Trends web search data for economic forecasting. We expand this work by providing algorithms to combine and aggregate search volume data, so that the resulting data is both consistent over time and consistent between data series. We give a brand equity example, where Google Trends is used to analyze shopping data for 100 top ranked brands and these data are used to nowcast economic variables. We describe the importance of out of sample prediction and show how principal component analysis (PCA) can be used to improve the signal to noise ratio and prevent overfitting in nowcasting models. We give a finance example, where exploratory data analysis and classification is used to analyze the relationship between Google Trends searches and stock prices.

Citation extraction

73
references
77
in-text mentions
73
distinct cited
2
self-citations
7,396
main-text words

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Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1Choi, H., & Varian, H. R (2012) Predicting the present with Google Trends0.73732100%
2Choi, H., & Varian, H. R (2009) Predicting initial claims for unemployment benefits. Google Inc. working paper0.64422100%
3Katona, G (1974) Psychology and consumer economics0.51121100%
4Gruen, T. W., Osmonbekov, T., & Czaplewski, A. J (2006) eWOM: The impact of customer-to-customer online know-how exchange on customer value and loyalty0.40511100%
5Preis, T., Moat, H. S., & Stanley, H. E (2013) Quantifying trading behavior in financial markets using Google Trends0.40511100%
6Carneiro, H. A., & Mylonakis, E (2009) Google Trends: A web-based tool for real-time surveillance of disease outbreaks0.40511100%
7Vosen, S., & Schmidt, T (2011) Forecasting private consumption: survey-based indicators vs. Google Trends0.40511100%
8Nuti, S. V., Wayda, B., Ranasinghe, I., Wang, S., Dreyer, R. P., Che… (2014) The use of Google Trends in health care research: a systematic review0.40511100%
9Hand, C., & Judge, G (2012) Searching for the picture: Forecasting UK cinema admissions using Google Trends data0.40511100%
10Mellon, J (2014) Internet search data and issue salience: The properties of Google Trends as a measure of issue salience0.40511100%

Showing the top 10 of 73 scored citations.