Who is Searching for Value Investing

I am always curious as to what my fellow value investors are doing. A new tool by Google (GOOG) called Insights for Search has given me a new way to find out more about value investors by looking at who is searching for “value investing” related topics. Google Insights for Search has data going back to 2004 on search terms used globally.

You can compare the search volume of several terms against each other over time. I decided to compare “value investing” versus “growth investing” since 2004.

Search Volume: “value investing” vs. “growth investing” Worldwide, 2004 – present

The blue line in the above chart represents the term “value investing” and the red line is “growth investing”. According to the above chart it appears “value investing” is a much more popular term than “growth investing”. It also appears that the volume of searches for value investing spiked in the fall of both 2006 and 2007. However, since that 2007 peak, value investing seems to be going down in search popularity. I wonder if this bodes well for value investors, many of whom have been suffering poor performance recently.

Now let’s look at where these value investing searches are occurring.

Regional Searches for “value investing”

1. Singapore 100
2. Hong Kong 79
3. India 46
4. Malaysia 35
5. South Africa 34
6. United States 32
7. Canada 31
8. Australia 25
9. Switzerland 13
10. United Kingdom 9

I was surprised to see that the United States was only ranked sixth in the above list of countries ranked by an index of search volume for the term, value investing. The top four positions were dominated by Asian countries. It might be worth looking at what is going on with value investing in Singapore, Hong Kong, and India. There might be some good growth potential for Value Investing News by adding better coverage of news in those regions. 

As an investor, it might be more valuable to note where value investing search volume is low, such as South America, Middle East, and most of Africa, excluding South Africa. This could indicate that these markets are less competitive. Of course, the language in which searches are conducted is also likely a big factor in the regional distribution of the value investing searches.

U.S. Searches for “value investing”

Looking closer to home, it is also interesting to note where in the United States folks are searching for value investing. As to be expected, New York dominates the search volume, which is not surprising since it is the home of Wall Street. Connecticut, which is a popular location for hedge funds, comes in second. I was surprised to see California only made the seventh position, behind DC, especially given many members of Value Investing News appear to live in California.

So, what are all these value investors searching for. Below are lists of the top searches and fasting rising search terms for value investing since 2004.

Top searches for “value investing”

1. value investing graham 100
2. value investing congress 95
3. book value investing 95
4. growth value investing 90
5. value investor 70
6. value investing buffet 60
7. value investing stocks 55
8. columbia value investing 50
9. value investing funds 45
10. value investing buffett 45

Rising Searches for “value investing”

1. value investors
2. value investor
3. value investing stocks
4. value investing pdf
5. value investing news
6. value investing india
7. value investing graham
8. value investing funds
9. value investing congress
10. value investing conference

It appears investors are very interested in Graham, conferences, books, and value investors. Nothing surprising there. However, I am surprised to see “growth value investing” is the four highest search term. I wonder what those folks were looking for.

Looking a bit closer at the rising search terms, I’m happy to see “value investing news” is the fifth highest ranking term. (Could that have something to do with my relatively new site, Value Investing News?) What the rising search list also tell me is that there is a lot of growing demand for information on value investors. I’ll keep that in mind as I add new content to my sites.

Google Insights for Search will provide hours of fun for data hounds like myself. I can see this tool being quite helpful to examine the growth and the relative strengths of various brands. Have you tried Google Insights for Search? What interesting trends and patterns have you spotted?

Disclosure: I do not own shares of Google (GOOG).