Search engines, as it turns out, are truth tellers. Humans, with no ill intent, lie about 30% of the time. These aren’t typically big, bold lies. They include half-truths, like when you tell everyone on Facebook your kids are the most beautiful children on Earth. Well, to you they are. To the rest of us, they’re a pain in the butt (just kidding?)
On social networking sites in particular, we’re prone to show only the unblemished, airbrushed side of ourselves. By contrast, we tend to reveal almost everything through our searches, and Google aggregates every mega-byte of this truth for researchers to utilize.
Since 2009, a program called Google Trends reveals how frequently any word or phrase has been searched by time and location. Seth Stephens-Davidowotitz ended up writing his thesis based on this data, then a book called Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are. “The everyday act of typing a word or phrase into a compact rectangular white box leaves a small trace of truth that, when multiplied by millions, eventually reveals profound realities,” he writes.
For example, did you think America had overcome its racist past when Obama was elected president? It turns out that Google searches for the N-word took off after his election. In America’s mid-west, both southern and northern states, Google searches showed an unsettling growth in racist queries and jokes.
For example, did you think America had overcome its racist past when Obama was elected president? It turns out that Google searches for the N-word took off after his election. In America’s mid-west, both southern and northern states, Google searches showed an unsettling growth in racist queries and jokes.
Did you also think, as polls had indicated, that Hillary Clinton would be the current president of the United States in 2016? That same plotted map of racist attitudes showed exactly where Trump was the most successful.
Google searches reveal a lot about us as humans. Women are most concerned about how they smell and men are most concerned about the size of a certain appendage. Women are also more concerned about whether their husband is gay than if he’s cheating on them. Is my husband gay? searches are the most common in conservative states like Alabama. Being a gay man in Alabama carries risks, after all.
Anxiety-related searches are highest in places with low education, lower incomes and more rural areas. Interestingly, anxiety-related searches rarely increase after terrorist attacks in major European and American cities where these attacks are most prone to occur.
Google searches also reveal health issues in different regions, affecting various ages and populations. Measles and flu outbreaks can be monitored simply by watching trends in Google searches.
It’s data like this that can inform social policy. What if, for example, we target funding for mental health in those rural areas where depression and anxiety are most often queried? What if resources are immediately sent to areas where flu symptoms and measles are first Googled?
Governments can now track the national mood and social issues facing different regions of a nation. This can lead to a more efficient use of resources, just like private companies target specific consumers.
Trends in Google searches are more effective than any survey (where we still often lie) or focus group (which takes time and money).
It's time to use all this data for the public good rather than just for profit.
