Google search sees the economy recovering
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PrintAdd to all the statistics about the recession, an interesting predictor on whether it is about to end - online search statistics. This is an interesting twist to predict which way the economy is heading. Google says by looking at Americans' search habits, they are confident the economy is recovering.
Google's chief economist Hal Varian, is pretty confident the national economy is recovering. He says in March, the number of Google users searching for information about unemployment benefits or employment centers began to drop. He thinks that's an indicator of jobless claims trending downwards.
Overall unemployment has continued to climb in the U.S., while new jobless claims have declined since peaking earlier this year. So he may have something here.
He is not optimistic on a quick turnaround in the employment numbers, though. He feels employment is going to take a longer time to recover.
He goes on to say that there has been an increase in searches for homes and real estate agents, possibly foreshadowing new strength for the housing market.
"As a contemporaneous predictor, predicting the present through search queries has been a pretty good predictor of initial (jobless) claims," said Varian, who was visiting Washington this week to make the case that government agencies should use Google tools to better draw current snapshots of consumer sentiment, corporate health and social interests.
Google has a tool called Google Trends that aggregates search terms.
This is quite a fascinating way of looking for future predictions.
