Stay Informed!

By Sean Luechtefeld on 05/07/2010 @ 03:10 PM

Tags: Innovation, Innovators, Behavioral Economics

Yesterday, Innovator-in-Residence Mindy Hernandez updated her Applying Behavioral Sciences in the Real World blog with the second installment of her article about using Google Trends to understand human behavior. Since the first part was so relevant to the work we do here at innovation@cfed, I decided to share a bit more.

To read the full text of Learning about Human Behavior from Google Trends: Part II, click here.

In the first installment, Mindy describes how Google Trends can help us draw conclusions about where people are spending their attention. Her telling example showed that more people had done Web searches for Paris Hilton than for Paris, France. We also learned that time matters. When applying Mindy’s points about Google Trends to a search for “innovation,” we learned that innovation is a more popular search term at the beginning of the year and that at the end of the year, searches for innovation drop dramatically. This suggests that something happens (perhaps due to the holidays in the US) that causes a decline in interest in innovation overall.

Part II of Mindy’s article also contains some exciting findings. First, Google Trends provides a rich data source that allows us to compare with other data sources. For example, Mindy did a search for “food stamps” and found that since the beginning of the recession, there has been a clear increase in the number of people looking into food stamps. However, comparing these numbers to those provided by the recent Government Accountability Office report is interesting – they find that there has been no relationship between the number of families receiving cash assistance in a given state and that state’s unemployment rate.

Another interesting way Google Trends can help reveal human behavior is by comparing how and when some trends rise and others fall. Mindy’s example examines searches for “blog” and “newspaper” and finds that around the midpoint of 2007, “blog” overtook “newspaper” as a more popular search term. This suggests that 2007 really was a pivotal moment in the evolution of our new media. In terms of innovation, this can be helpful because it can teach us how best to capture audiences. For example, what if I were to want to advertise a free financial literacy course? Would I use Facebook or Twitter? Even with Twitter’s growing popularity, the graph below indicates that far more people are searching for Facebook than they are for Twitter.

There are a slew of other interesting findings, as well as neat resources about human behavior and Google Trends. Check them out by visiting Mindy’s blog post here.

Have you used Google Trends? Tell us what it helped you learn about innovation by using the comments section below!

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