to look at patterns and trends it can be used to predict stock market trends.

From the NY times:



The terms people search for on Google have been used to forecast how many Americans have the flu, travel plans and the price for which cars sell. Now a scientific study shows that Google search can be used to predict the stock market.

Using Google Trends, a service that shows the popularity of search terms, researchers from Warwick Business School in England and Boston University’s department of physics found that the type of terms people search Google for on a given week can predict whether the Dow Jones industrial average will rise or fall the following week.

The study, titled “Quantifying Trading Behavior in Financial Markets Using Google Trends,” was published Thursday in Nature’s Scientific Reports.

The researchers tracked 98 search terms from Google Trends between 2004 and 2011. These included investment-related words, like debt, stocks, portfolio, unemployment and markets, and non-investment terms, including lifestyle, arts, happy, war, conflict and politics.


http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/26/google-search-terms-can-predict-stock-market-study-finds/