Everybody Lies

The Truth Emerges According to Analysis of Google Searches

In the late 1990s, Google vanquished rival search-engines, such as MetaCrawler, Lycos and Altavista, by creating an algorithm that returned more meaningful search results than they did. Analysts now plumb exactly what people search on Google for to derive findings that illuminate the kinds of truths users reveal when typing anonymously into a search engine. The benefit of tracking Google searches as an analytical tool isn’t their pervasiveness or the amount of data they generate. The benefit is that people acting anonymously search for issues with an honesty that traditional survey and poll methodologies can never plumb. This makes trusting polls an antiquated, misleading strategy.

For example, before and after President Barack Obama’s first election, Gallup polls and researchers concluded that most voters didn’t care about his racial heritage. Therefore, pundits said the 2008 election marked the emergence of a “post-racial society” in the United States. However, on election night, one in...