Beware of Using Google Trends for Location-Based Stereotyping

So I was reading the New York Times today and I encountered this article.

"...In a novel approach, the defense in an obscenity trial in Florida plans to use publicly accessible Google search data to try to persuade  jurors that their neighbors have broader interests than they might have thought.

"In the trial of a pornographic Web site operator, the defense plans to show that residents of Pensacola are more likely to use Google to search for terms like “orgy” than for “apple pie” or “watermelon.” The publicly accessible data is vague in that it does not specify how many people are searching for the terms, just their relative popularity over time. But the defense lawyer, Lawrence Walters, is arguing that the evidence is sufficient to demonstrate that interest in the sexual subjects exceeds that of more mainstream topics — and that by extension, the sexual material distributed by his client is not outside the norm." [read more]

The defense is using Google Trends. This service allows users to compare search trends in a given time, and also in a given area. So I decided to play around with the service and did some *naughty* searches.

It's so easy to do location-based stereotyping using Google Trends. If irresponsibly taken to another level, people can make broad cultural generalizations. For example, searches for "nude women" are very popular in India and South Africa, while searches for "nude men" are popular in the Czech Republic and the Philippines. Hmm. What does that tell us? Note that you can drill down to each city and find out which cities these searches are more popular.

Here's another example. Let's say we want to know what countries are more interested with "New Age." The result shows that people in South Africa and Italy are interested finding more about New age. But if we drill down on the United States, it's surprising to see that most "New Age" searches are coming from Kentucky. Obviously, this proves the popularity of New Age in those locations, but what the data don't tell us is how many adhere to New Age beliefs. So let's be mindful about stereotyping people in Kentucky as "New Agey." For now it's enough to know that certain search keywords are popular in certain locations.

Google Trends can also be used to determine the popularity of certain people in certain locations. For this example, let's see whose more popular worldwide, "Barack Obama" or "John McCain".

On the domestic front, Obama is more popular, especially in Washington D.C. This proves that, at least on the internet, Obama gets more publicity than McCain. No surprise there since the Obama campaign has been using the web to its full potential. However, based on the worldwide results, John McCain is only half as popular as Barack Obama. All in all Obama beats McCain in all search trends categories! We can interpret this as follows. From a geopolitical perspective, there is more interest in Obama than John McCain. Whether those domestic and foreign interests are favorable or otherwise, who knows? But it's logical to say, at this point, that from a geopolitical perspective, the people around the world are now more familiar with Obama than with McCain. Heck, Obama is more popular than George Bush (even if we don't include the W) and Al Gore. So draw your own conclusions. Then again, Obama is still no match for Hannah Montana.

That said, Google Trends is a fun and nifty tool. But let's be mindful when using it. As much as possible, let's resist the temptation of making very broad cultural and location-based stereotypical generalizations.