One way to measure the public consciousness of a topic is to topic is to use the Goggle Trends facility. As expected, terms like Christmas and Easter have a huge seasonality and with the sudden death of John Travolta’s son, Travolta has a sudden peak. Obama and Kevin Rudd (the Australian Prime Minister) both had flurries of activity that have died down. Shares and ASX are both slipping – people are less interested in investing. For me the term Industrial Hygiene was of interest – there have been a slow decline for years.
Google Trends Industrial Hygiene
The Google Trends engine has been used to predict flu outbreaks some two weeks before traditional reporting methods. See www.google.org/about/flutrends/
