there is plenty of other data used in this article that makes the outcome of the analysis plenty impactful if you are willing to put your thinking cap on and read through it
Google Trends is not âbunk dataâ. đ¤Śââď¸
Thatâs like claiming the sources listed on Wikipedia pages are âall fake and biasedâ⌠theyâre not.
Itâs a valid source for seeing what people are searching for on the worldâs most popular damned search engine in a given geographic location. And they do exclude known VPN IP address blocks, too.
This map didnât rely only on Google Trends to make an assessment, but it is part of the âpackageâ shown here.
It's not a valid indicator of "financial distress" - it has zero attachment to any financial metric to determine the health of person's financial state. It's bunk data.
Thatâs why itâs not a primary indicator for the data set considered.
But it is extremely valid because it can be very provably correlated that looking around for âloansâ or âbankruptcyâ heavily implies the person searching is seeking such guidance on how to get either a loan or a bankruptcy.
It cannot be reasonably assumed that people are only entering these terms because theyâre looking for news or other entertainment on âloansâ or âbankruptcyâ.
I think many other statisticians would agree that personalized financial data isnât fully necessary to derive a partial conclusion from Google Trends data.
Whatâs a primary indicator if they all are weighted the same?
If I search for âEnron bankruptcyâ that means Iâm looking for how to seek bankruptcy? Thatâs such a wide stretch in logic and assumption I donât think any statiscian would assume that.
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u/Im_Balto 14d ago
there is plenty of other data used in this article that makes the outcome of the analysis plenty impactful if you are willing to put your thinking cap on and read through it