Thursday, January 8, 2009

Google Trends: Comparing Ice Cream Flavors

A Google R&D post from a few months ago A new flavor of Google Trends interpreted the Google trends graphs for vanilla ice cream and chocolate ice cream.

I commented about the post here: Does Google Trends data equate to consumer interest?

Taking another look at the Google R&D post, an additional problem is the queries the R&D poster uses are imprecise for a conclusion about ice cream.

My suggestion: Try these instead: "vanilla ice cream" and "chocolate ice cream".

Probably, there are far more chocolate products  in the world than vanilla. For example:
cakes, candy bars, cookies. However, folks still like vanilla ice cream more than chocolate ice cream.

The surrounding quotes enable Google Trends to return ice cream rather than a mixture of products.

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