Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/249731 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
Texto para discussão No. 683
Publisher: 
Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), Departamento de Economia, Rio de Janeiro
Abstract: 
It is widely known that Google Trends has become one of the most popular free tools used by forecasters both in academics and in the private and public sectors. There are many papers, from several different fields, concluding that Google Trends improve forecasts' accuracy. However, what seems to be widely unknown, is that each sample of Google search data is different from the other, even if you set the same search term, data and location. This means that it is possible to find arbitrary conclusions merely by chance. This paper aims to show why and when it can become a problem and how to overcome this obstacle.
Subjects: 
Google trends
forecasting
nowcasting
big data
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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