.In today’s financial environment, everyone from small time investors v. large institutional investors are always looking for a way, legal or otherwise, to predict whether or not a stock will increase or decrease over time. Many people have made or lost fortunes trying to be one way or another which way a stock will turn.

Google Trends

One predicting factor may actually be Google trends. Google trends shows users the traffic over time for particular search words. Using Google trends may help an investor predict whether a company’s product is being searched more than previous seasons. For example if we look at the following search terms in Google trends for Apple, iPhone, iPad and iPad mini.

The data above shows huge increase in searches around iPhone and a decent amount of searches around iPad. This can be a relative predictor of both product successes as they’ve both done well over the last six years. Apple’s iPad mini has not been as successful as a product as the iPhone or iPad.

Further, one could look at the chart for 2013. While there have been spikes, you make notice the trend line appears to be pointing to both iPhone and iPad searches have flat lined or slightly downward. This appears to be somewhat cyclical as Apple introduces new products, but may also indicate that the market for both devices has been saturated and we may not see impressive gains from Apple’s products and indirectly its stock.