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Stress and depression are also strongly correlated with religion, but less so with God or prayer. There's a drop in the searches for religion around christmas..

by pygy 17y ago

Stress and depression are also strongly correlated with religion, but less so with God or prayer. There's a drop in the searches for religion around christmas... http://www.google.com/trends?q=religion,+stress,+depression&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0 http://www.google.com/trends?q=religion,+stress,+depression&... Notice also the spike in stress and depression searches around Romney's speech on religion, we'll come to that later on. - It's even more interesting if you look at it region per region. * US: http://www.google.com/trends?q=stress,+depression,+religion,+shoulder&ctab=0&geo=us&geor=all&date=all&sort=1 http://www.google.com/trends?q=stress,+depression,+religion,... * UK: http://www.google.com/trends?q=stress,+depression,+religion,+shoulder&ctab=0&geo=gb&geor=all&date=all&sort=1 http://www.google.com/trends?q=stress,+depression,+religion,... * Australia: http://www.google.com/trends?q=stress,+depression,+religion,+shoulder&ctab=0&geo=au&geor=all&date=all&sort=1 http://www.google.com/trends?q=stress,+depression,+religion,... There are different patterns in all three regions, but the correlation holds. I took shoulder as a neutral term, to be sure the variations were not related to some global trend in search volume. - Surpisingly, though, the Romney speech spike is bigger in worldwide queries than in US specific ones. At the world scale, the spike is also very correlated with feet, flower and shoulder... It's not the case in the US... And the Romney spike is much smaller when compared to the average frequency of each term. * World: http://www.google.com/trends?q=religion,+feet,+flower,+shoulder&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=1 http://www.google.com/trends?q=religion,+feet,+flower,+shoul... * US: http://www.google.com/trends?q=religion,+feet,+flower,+shoulder&ctab=0&geo=us&date=all&sort=1 http://www.google.com/trends?q=religion,+feet,+flower,+shoul... Do you have any idea of what happened worldwide in November 2007? Is it a Google bug? Or was there an overall spike in search queries at that point?

neilk 17y ago
Ok, double weirdness. Earlier I was seeing spikes in late 2007 for almost any query. At first I thought it was confirming my theory because that's when the housing bubble was really popping. But it was also there for control words, including "the". So I reported a bug in their forum. But now that's all gone. Either that was speedy corrective action or a transient problem.
- pygy 17y ago
  It's gone here too (I'm from Belgium). Edit: it's back again, but not if you look at the year 2007 specifically. The regional differences in seasonal patterns are interresting, I think. They all exihibit a major drop in the summer months. On top of that there's a 3 month periodicity in Australia and a 1.5 month periodicity in the UK. In the US, there's a drop mid november each year. Are there English or Australian citizens around to explain what happens? I assume it's related to national holidays, but it would be nice to have a confirmation.
- pbhj 17y ago
  I see a general trend on all queries peaking around March and late November. This matches what I see on retail websites I have access to the backend of. Searches like money, sex and music are quite flat but appear to have a low profile match to this general trend. "sun cream" and "snowman" are clear counter examples.
  - pygy 17y ago
    Looking at the detailed trafic, year per year, I can't see any such tendency. Some years, there are some bumps for sex around November or March, but never both, and their amplitude isn't bigger than the seemingly random fluctuations.

by pygy 17y ago

neilk 17y ago

Ok, double weirdness. Earlier I was seeing spikes in late 2007 for almost any query. At first I thought it was confirming my theory because that's when the housing bubble was really popping. But it was also there for control words, including "the". So I reported a bug in their forum. But now that's all gone. Either that was speedy corrective action or a transient problem.

pygy 17y ago
It's gone here too (I'm from Belgium). Edit: it's back again, but not if you look at the year 2007 specifically. The regional differences in seasonal patterns are interresting, I think. They all exihibit a major drop in the summer months. On top of that there's a 3 month periodicity in Australia and a 1.5 month periodicity in the UK. In the US, there's a drop mid november each year. Are there English or Australian citizens around to explain what happens? I assume it's related to national holidays, but it would be nice to have a confirmation.
pbhj 17y ago
I see a general trend on all queries peaking around March and late November. This matches what I see on retail websites I have access to the backend of. Searches like money, sex and music are quite flat but appear to have a low profile match to this general trend. "sun cream" and "snowman" are clear counter examples.
- pygy 17y ago
  Looking at the detailed trafic, year per year, I can't see any such tendency. Some years, there are some bumps for sex around November or March, but never both, and their amplitude isn't bigger than the seemingly random fluctuations.