Ancient Greece had the Oracle at Delphi. The Shang dynasty had oracle bones. Contemporary America has Google.
Earlier this month, Lawrence Summers, President Obama’s top economic adviser, unveiled a new class of tea leaf to gauge the direction of the American economy: Google searches. The number of queries for “Great Depression,” which surged earlier in the year, had declined sharply, Mr. Summers noted. Economic anxiety is abating. The economy is probably turning the corner.
It was not the first time Google was invoked to show us the way. The company has a tool to track the path of the flu virus by looking at geographic trends in Internet queries for related terms. A study by Google researchers suggested search patterns could be used to track everything from home sales to the popularity of tourist destinations, and add to the accuracy of forecasts for new-home starts and car sales.
The article gives a hint at another force that may drive these searches when it mentions the phrase “dead cat bounce”. Here Google News provides the answer: in March 2009 there was a sudden spike of stories including the term. I therefore gather that much of the serching is driven by the news media all rushing off to the same story.