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Discovering business information from search engine query data

Liwen Vaughan (Faculty of Information and Media Studies, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada)

Online Information Review

ISSN: 1468-4527

Article publication date: 12 June 2014

1378

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the feasibility of discovering business information from search engine query data. Specifically the study tried to determine whether search volumes of company names are correlated with the companies’ business performance and position data.

Design/methodology/approach

The top 50 US companies in the 2012 Fortune 500 list were included in the study. The following business performance and position data were collected: revenues, profits, assets, stockholders’ equity, profits as a percentage of revenues, and profits as a percentage of assets. Data on the search volumes of the company names were collected from Google Trends, which is based on search queries users enter into Google. Google Trends data were collected in the two scenarios of worldwide searches and US searches.

Findings

The study found significant correlations between search volume data and business performance and position data, suggesting that search engine query data can be used to discover business information. Google Trends’ worldwide search data were better than the US domestic search data for this purpose.

Research limitations/implications

The study is limited to only one country and to one year of data.

Practical implications

Publicly available search engine query data such as those from Google Trends can be used to estimate business performance and position data which are not always publicly available. Search engine query data are timelier than business data.

Originality/value

This is the first study to establish a relationship between search engine query data and business performance and position data.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

This study is part of a larger project of web data mining for business intelligence funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Thanks to research assistant Sunita Lamichhane for helping with data collection.

Citation

Vaughan, L. (2014), "Discovering business information from search engine query data", Online Information Review, Vol. 38 No. 4, pp. 562-574. https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-08-2013-0190

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2014, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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