Checking how Google Trends works

This graph clearly shows the impact of digital media in today's world. Clearly, all the talk around the swine flue is not due to the real danger of this disease. It is people's subjective opinions and concerns that drive this irrational, exuberant behavior.

Congratulations, once again, to Google for a very successful business idea!

Leveraging social media to make yourself famous

Who would have thought a decade ago than one can become famous without being a star, nor investing a chunk of money in PR activities?

Julia Allison is the mere example that it is possible to be well-known by having a steady, continuous presence in targeted online websites. Julia Allison has clever leveraged social media, Web 3.0 to position herself as a person notorious enough to be regularly followed by thousands of people.

And how did she achieved this? Wired magazine explains it succinctly:

1) It's not who you know, it's who you're next to.
When you go to a party, be sure to get photographed with well-known guests — even if they have no idea who you are. By posting these pics on your blog, you can make yourself look like an established personality.

2) Dress against type.
Heading to a party filled with khaki- clad geeks? Consider a flashy designer dress. Have a reputation for glamour? Stick with a simple T-shirt. Counterintuitive wardrobe choices keep your fans guessing.

3) Embrace enigma.
One day Allison announced that online haters were ruining her life and she'd never blog again. The next day she was back. Is she a train wreck or mastermind? Narcissist or self-satirist? No one knows — that's why they keep watching.

4) Let your minions fight your battles.
Sure, Allison has her critics — but all the discussion helps keep her in the spotlight. "Create two separate camps of supporters and attackers," says Timothy Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek. "Don't spend a lot of time defending yourself. If someone attacks you, let it sit there. If you respond, you don't give other people a chance to get engaged and defend you."

5) Be a hot woman with an exhibitionist streak.


I am not saying that one should do this. Rather, what I want to point to is the increasing role that social media plays and that being aware of this and cleverly leveraging it can increase the success of a business. I´ll touch upon this more in the next post.

New use for Google Adwords

A recent The Economist article points to a secondary use of the Google search words. According to Hyunyoung Choi, who works at Google, fluctuations in the frequency with which people search for certain words or phrases online can improve the accuracy of the econometric models used to predict, for example, retail-sales figures or house sales.

The advantage of using Google Trends is that one can forecast performance based on current data, and not on old, historical data. Although it doesn't work for all industries, Google Trends may provide useful paid services and thus become a new business area for Google. Currently, these data are available through a site called Google Trends, which allows anyone who cares to do so to download an index of the aggregate volume of searches for particular terms or categories.It is important to note, though, that it is critical which categories you choose, and how the categories move in the same direction and to the same extent to your company's products / services.

How widely could this idea be applied? For some things, like retail sales, the categories into which Google classifies its search-trend data correspond closely to what people may want to predict, such as the sales of a particular brand of car. For others, like sales of houses, things are less clear. It appears that searches for estate agents work better than those for home financing.

All in all, this new Google tool may prove to be more accurate than the internal strategy department's forecast, which is based on historical, old data already.

See the below charts for an example of Google Trends' use.