Google Trends is a quick and popular way to assess the
importance of ideas, events and trends by looking at the results of people’s
web searches. If the searches for
something are trending up, it is suggestive that it is growing in
importance. One way of assessing
the impact of northern economic development in Ontario at least as a concept
that has seized the imagination is to conduct a Google Trends search. In
particular, it is interesting to see what the impact of two northern
development plans has been – The Northern Ontario Growth Plan and the Quebec
Plan Nord. I put in
“northern Ontario growth plan” and “plan nord” for trends in the “region” Canada
over the period all years (2004 to 2012) into Google Trends and downloaded the
results. I then graphed the results for the 2011 to 2012 period (See Figure)
The Northern Ontario Growth Plan was released in March 2011
while the Plan Nord was released a little later in May of the same year. The Google Trends plot is not the
number of searches but rather an index of the number of searches for a term to
the average number of searches for the term over the time period. For example, if there is a value in the
graph of 5; this means that traffic is 5 times the average for the time
period. As a result, it is a relative measure showing whether something is trending
up or down. The results were
intriguing in that they reveal enough activity to show a rising trend in the
wake of the release of the Plan Nord.
However, there was so little interest in the Northern Growth Plan that
it did not generate enough activity to even register a trend.
This is not the same as saying the Plan Nord will be a
success and the Northern Growth Plan will not. What it is saying is that the Plan Nord seems to have
generated a lot more interest on the web whereas the Northern Ontario Growth Plan
has not. The fact that the Plan
Nord has generated so much interest could simply be better marketing but that
in itself would tell you something about how the Quebec government values its
northern development plan. Or, it
could be that people are more interested in Quebec’s northern development than
Ontario’s. However, it one truly believes
that large groups of people on average are very forward looking and very smart,
it also means they may see more potential in the Quebec
Plan than the Ontario Plan.
Whatever way you look at it, it would appear that the Northern Ontario
Growth Plan does not look very credible.
Google Trends has spoken.
