by LethalAmountsOfSalt
Considering most retail companies are strongly pushing online stores, a large part of their revenue would come from their online stores. If you compare the google trend data to last year’s data you can make inferences about how they would do on this quarter’s earning report, relative to last year’s earnings report. Considering the specific company did nothing drastic in their physical retail sector (opening/closing a fuck ton of stores) in the last year, you can go purely off this metric alone. If they did change up their physical retail sector, you can price that in. If they opened a bunch of stores, and they’re a company that relies on in store purchases(groceries, large purchases that can’t be shipped) then you assume that this helped. If they are a company that doesn’t rely on in-store purchases you can assume that this hurt them, because the decreasing physical retail market can’t keep up with rent. Same goes if they close a bunch of stores, but in reverse.
Is this retarded? Am I missing something why google trends can’t reflect online sales?
EDIT: I got a notification about web based services and similar metrics, but it looks like maybe the guy deleted his comment. Services like Netflix, Hulu or other web based services look like they could be predicted by Google trends, but I don’t think so. People don’t search up Netflix when they want to watch a show, they either go to the downloaded app, or go through a bookmark. Also, whenever people give money to Netflix, it’s usually done automatically, never prompting the user to search up Netflix. This means that when people search up Netflix, they’re either a new user, or searching something up about Netflix. Regardless, it’s far less accurate information pertaining to actual customers.