Google has become the latest technology giant to show the impact of the global credit crunch - but it has not cut a single job or trading forecast in doing so.
By playing with its latest toy, the company has revealed how Britons are responding to the imminent prospect of a recession, in a way synonymous with its core business.
According to its Insights for Search tool, searches for ‘homes in Spain;’ ‘city breaks’ and ‘moving home’ have fallen, just as ‘budget meals’ ‘vouchers’ and ‘clothes swaps’ have risen.
Our money worries undoubtedly power the 900% increase in searches for ‘safe savings;’ the 150% increase in ‘home safes’ and the 200% rise in ‘petrol prices,’ all since October 2007.
The number of Britons looking for ‘redundancy insurance’ is up 450% over the same period, closely followed by those trawling for ‘negative equity,’ up 220% on last year.
Trying to make ourselves feel better explains why searches for comfort foods are rising – ‘apple crumble’ is 40% more popular today than last autumn, Google said.
Production manager Elan Dekel said: “This is a fascinating snapshot into how Britons are reacting to the current economic situation.”
“We can see trends emerge in real time. What people are searching for gives insights into the zeitgeist, what people are interested in and what concerns them.”
The Google tool that generated the results analyses a portion of searches to compute how many have been done for a term, relative to the total number historically.
Oct 28, 2008
Email this article
Printer friendly page
Previous Page
