The search marketing community lamented when Overture/Yahoo removed their bid tracker tool. This was the easiest way to get a proxy on what terms people searched on the most. Did more people search for cheap travel or travel? Coke or Pepsi? Obama or McCain? 数据挖掘交友
This last one is particularly intriguing. Could search data help predict the next president of the United States? 数据挖掘实验室
Imagine the search world's ecstasy when Google announced recently that Google Trends now has the ability to compare terms on a relative scale. While it's not as good as the old Overture/Yahoo tool that gave absolute search numbers, it's still very helpful, especially when it comes to the presidency.
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Indiana goes Google Gaga for Obama 数据挖掘论坛
The graph below compares U.S. search trends in April for the terms Clinton, McCain, and Obama. Total searches for Obama far exceeded those of Clinton. For every Clinton search, there were 1.60 Obama searches. Yet, for every Clinton search, there were only .48 McCain searches. 数据挖掘工具
click to enlarge
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This makes sense, because the Democrats were in a heated primary. What's interesting is that Obama had so many more searches than Clinton. 数据挖掘研究院
Keep in mind that Clinton is artificially inflated by the fact that it contains searches having nothing to do with Hillary (e.g., people looking for Bill, Clinton Township, etc.). Obama is a unique term, so it has less statistical noise. Good gracious, did I just use the term "statistical noise" in an article?
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Also, the data doesn't factor in searches done for Barack. Hence, Obama's 1.60:1 ratio is most likely even higher than the numbers indicate. 数据挖掘实验室
The other part of this graph points out that in April searches for Obama in the state of Indiana greatly exceeded those of Clinton. Hence, it would've been easy to predict that Obama was closing the gap on Hillary in that state. After all, if the voters already had decided to vote for Hillary, there wouldn't be a need to search for information on Obama.
Obama or McCain? Who's Going to Win? 数据挖掘实验室
As November rapidly approaches, who's going to be the next to sit in the Oval Office? The data below indicates that Obama should be the next commander-in-chief. However, it's interesting to note that once Hillary conceded, searches for the Democrats greatly declined. At the same time, it was the first month that more people searched for McCain than Clinton.
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Looking at the here and now (last 30 days), Obama searches are still 3:1 over McCain. However, Obama's search lead has slipped 11 percent in the last 30 days.
