Future Orientation Index

The Future Orientation Index was introduced by Tobias Preis, Helen Susannah Moat, H. Eugene Stanley and Steven Bishop using Google Trends to demonstrate that Google users from countries with a higher per capita GDP are more likely to search for information about the future than information about the past.^[1] The findings suggest there may be a link between online behaviour and real-world economic indicators. The authors of the study examined Google query logs made by Google users in 45 different countries in 2010 and calculated the ratio of the volume of searches for the coming year (‘2011’) to the volume of searches for the previous year (‘2009’).^[2][3][4][5]

Footnotes

1. Tobias Preis, Helen Susannah Moat, H. Eugene Stanley and Steven R. Bishop (2012). "Quantifying the Advantage of Looking Forward". Scientific Reports. 2: 350. doi:10.1038/srep00350. PMC 3320057. PMID 22482034.
2. A. Sedghi (February 8, 2013). "Which countries are the most forward thinking? See it visualised". The Guardian. Retrieved March 9, 2013.
3. K. Bevan (February 7, 2013). "Germany knocks Britain off top spot to become world's most forward-thinking country in Google searches". Daily Mail. Retrieved March 9, 2013.
4. B. Warner (January 31, 2013). "What Google Searches About the Future Tell Us About the Present". Bloomberg Businessweek. Retrieved March 9, 2013.
5. C. Dewey (February 8, 2013). "Map: The world's most and least 'forward-looking' countries, based on Google searches". The Washington Post. Retrieved March 9, 2013.