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Bill Tancer is the general manager of global research at Hitwise and a weekly columnist for Time Magazine.
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Top of Mind - Search and the Economy
July 09, 2008 3:40 PM
I was reading through the comments from Monday's post, "Daisy Whitney" and "Lockean Thinker" make a good point. What's missing from the top "fear of" searches is any mention of recent economic turmoil. Where are the searches for "gas prices," "foreclosure," "recession" and other terms?
While none of the above terms existed in the top 100 "fear of" queries, there is significant volume of searches on the terms by themselves. I thought it would be interesting to compare the volume of searches on those specific terms.
For all of the attention paid to foreclosures in the wake of the sub-prime mortgage crisis, and debate over whether we've entered a recession, gas prices continue to be the leading search term of the group, perhaps because pump prices are our most tangible indicator for our shrinking buying power.
July 9, 2008 in economics | Permalink | User Comments (2)
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OK, so I know this is obvious and all but it is pretty amazing that gas prices has become such a barometer for the economy, for foreign relations, for feelings about the war and the middle east, etc. It is amazing that one thing can start to cause us to change habits, i.e. the huge drop in sales of trucks and big fat cars, and subsequent rise at companies that make small cars
Posted by: Daisy Whitney | Jul 10, 2008 12:22:14 PM
I think this last statement should be calibrated on demographics - gas prices is an issue every person in the US who drives a car thinks about. Whether we are in a recession or have increasing inflation is not something everyone in this group of people will be thinking about, even if they have general economic fears. Furthermore, gas prices may be something that is searched repeatedly as people look for offers from gas stations, where recession and inflation are not necessarily terms prone to repeat searching.
Posted by: Jan | Jul 10, 2008 5:23:28 PM
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