You're right of course, institutional traders are not searching Google or Yahoo Answers for "should I buy or sell AAPL?" However - strong analytics could tell

You're right of course, institutional traders are not searching Google or Yahoo Answers for "should I buy or sell AAPL?" However - strong analytics could tell you some interesting habits if you analyze search strings coming from IP blocks known to be used by said institutional traders. For example, I imagine institutional traders do a lot of research on companies before taking a position in them - this research might show up in search analytics data and Google traders could place a position before the institutional traders do. Would this be considered illegal by the SEC? I have no idea, but I could definitely see Google doing this.