World Cup Trends Powered by Google

Google has launched a World Cup microsite that analyses how each country is feeling about their upcoming teams based on search terms and gives it to you in the form of smart  soundbites (great for dropping into conversations pre game?) and fun infographics. .

The World Cup trends page compares the search habits of two countries that will soon meet on the field, then uses a "newsroom" of engineers, analysts and writers to find interesting facts for the website. 

Today, for instance, we learn that as Brazilians gear up for the match against Mexico, fans are more concerned with Googling pictures of Neymar’s yellow hair than his yellow card, and that following glory for Germany against Portugal, there were 3 X more searches for Muller’s hat trick than Pepe’s head butt. 

The page also lists standard trends for each of the matches happening in the tournament, which team is more popular worldwide, and the top World Cup-related questions on each side. Other information bites that compare World Cup search trends against other sports are also included (for instance: “Even with the NBA finals in progress, World Cup search terms are 10 X more prevalent").

URL: http://www.google.com/trends/worldcup#/en-us/ 

Google Trends..Helping us to understand the present and predict the future

In its beginning, Google was created only as a Search Engine. Nowadays, it can help us discover new insights, compare brands popularity in different regions and even predict market fluctuations through Google Trends.


  Google Trends recognizes which are the most popular topics in the Internet  through the analysis of the most searched terms on Google.  Sir Francis Bacon quoted "Knowledge is power" and Google Trends is giving us the key to enter in the people most popular interests.


 For a marketer, Google Trends can give invaluable information to understand the health of a brand, discover insights to prepare a marketing campaign and follow the success of this last one. The analysis of the popularity of one brand towards its competitor can be a useful tool to discover in which regions a brand is more weak in order to take some actions. Some analysis show a strong correlation between the searches of a company name on Google and its sales. As an example, we can mention the connection between Ford's monthly sales and Ford Google trends during 2004-2009 period. (http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidleinweber/2013/04/26/big-data-gets-bigger-now-google-trends-can-predict-the-market/)
Furthermore, if a Company launches a new ad, a good way to evaluate its impact in the web is to analyze if there is an increase in the search of its brands name.  Even if Google Trends is not 100% reliable to predict the success of a campaign, it can give you a hint of what is going on.



Another area where this tool can be useful is the stocks market. Last year, three economists were able to predict the evolution of the stocks through Google Trends. How? They found a strong correlation between Internet searches for a Company's name and its trade volume. Additionally, the quantity of searches of the word "debt"  helped to predict the market up and downs. Even if this type of analysis is new, there is not doubt that this data collected by Google Trends will be in the future another parameter that analysts will take into account to study peoples' investment intentions.


Google Trend has been a great source of information to many companies, however, there is still more applications of this tool that we need to discover.

Maria Lourdes Peirano


Sources:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidleinweber/2013/04/26/big-data-gets-bigger-now-google-trends-can-predict-the-market/). 
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2292198/How-to-Use-Google-Trends-for-SEO
http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2013/08/use-google-trends-punch-up-content-creation/