Countries with a higher per capita gross domestic product (GDP) are more likely to have searches for information about the future than information about the past, according to an analysis of Google search queries in Scientific Reports.

Is there a link between online behavior and real-world economic indicators?  Maybe.

A group examined Google search queries made by Internet users in 45 different countries in 2010, to calculate the ratio of the volume of searches for the coming year ('2011') to the volume of searches for the previous year ('2009'), which they call the 'future orientation index'.  Sounds clunky?  Sure, but with so much data - they used the the Google Trends website and analyzed more than 45 billion search queries carried out worldwide - it may be data.

Accepting the premise that 2011 and 2009 were meaningful cultural indicators, they compared the future orientation index to the per capita GDP of each country and found a strong tendency for countries in which Google users inquire more about the future to exhibit a higher GDP.

"We see two leading explanations for this relationship between search activity and GDP", said University College London visiting researcher Tobias Preis. "Firstly, these findings may reflect international differences in attention to the future and the past, where a focus on the future supports economic success. Secondly, these findings may reflect international differences in the type of information sought online, perhaps due to economic influences on available Internet infrastructure."

As use of the Internet and other technological systems grow, increasingly large amounts of data are being generated, the empirical analysis of which can provide insights into real-world social phenomena, from influenza epidemics to stock market trading volumes.

Steven Bishop, professor in Mathematics at University College London and one of the authors of the paper work, is currently coordinating a large scale European project called FuturICT, to examine how we can use such data to understand the complex behaviour of society. The project has a particular focus on the new dynamics of our social interactions in the presence of global technological networking, considering the catastrophes which can arise, such as the recent financial crisis, but also the opportunities offered by our increasing connectivity. 

The project consortium was recently invited to put together a bid for 10 years of European Commission funding to support a 1 billion Euro research endeavour in this area.