The growth of analytics and the decline in MR

The chart below illustrates the level of interest in the terms market research and analytics.

This chart does not mean that market research is disappearing, nor that analytics is replacing market research, but it does illustrate a change in language and the focus of people searching the Internet via Google. Most established words and phrases show a decline over time on Google Insihts, a sort of entropy perhaps. The exceptions of those that grow rapidly, for example analytics in the chart above.

Amongst the key changes that have driven the growth in 'analytics' were Google  Analytics, Adsense, Adwords, Web Analytics, and Business Analytics.

Notes

1) Google Insights reports the volumes of specified search terms that people have entered into its search engine over the years.

2) The idea for the chart above came from a similar chart produced by Tom Anderson looking at Ngrams, Google's facility to search books.

Comments

[Ray Poynter]

Hi Tdoyon, I think misleading is a little harsh? I do not feel that a comparison has to be apples-to-apples to be of interest. Please note, I say in the post that the chart does not suggest that analytics is replacing market research.

What I am highlighting in the chart, or trying to, is that the level of interest, as measured by how often people type a word or phrase into Google's search engine, in the words "market research" is declining (and I highlight that is a typical pattern for a mature phrase). However, interest in another term used in the knowledge area, one that has areas of overlap with market research, is showing strong growth in interest (I also highlight what some of the drivers of analytics are).

Another valid issue about the chart is that because Analytics is a single word it is easier for it to get more hits than a phrase like "market research". However, that does not explain the different trajectories of the curves, which is based on the interest amongst people who use Google's search engine.

When I ran the Google Insights chart, most of the top news terms that it reported were about Business Knowledge and Information - confirming my view that they were interesting to compare. A few years ago ESOMAR declared that market researchers should seek to 'own' Business Knowledge and Information - a goal that is probably further away now than ever.

I agree with the point that the Y axis could/should have been labelled. However, I disagree with the insult about misleading since the note at the foot of the post explains what the Y axis measures. The reason for this is that Google Insights is pretty loose in how it describes the values it produces. What they say is "Insights for Search aims to provide insights into broad search patterns. Several approximations are used to compute these results.
The Insights for Search map is intended for general analysis of volume patterns. Borders are an approximation and may not be accurate.".

The numbers the Y axis are an arbitrary scale based on relativities, scaled and normalised (by Google) to fit into the range 0 to 100. If a more popular item had been added, the values for Analytics would be lower, if Analytics had been removed the numbers for Market research would be higher, but the shape of the curve would remain broadly the same.

I accept that I ought not to have assumed that people were familiar with Google Insights and the way it reports information. I do not accept that the intention or likely effect of the chart is to mislead.

[Tdoyon]

The problem with this graph is a failure to define analytics. The word is now so overused as to be meaningless. When somone says analytics thet could mean metrics, numbers, analysis, descriptive statistics, predictive modeling, financial analysis, java, nosql, sql, data, databases, reports, all of the above, or none of the above. In contrast, there is no such "miscommunication" regarding market research.

The above graph is not an apples-to-apples comparison and should be considered misleading. Speaking of misleading, why isn't the y-axis labeled?