Brexit: search behaviour of the UK voters before referendum
Tomorrow, June 23 Great Britain is voting in a referendum on whether to remain a member of the European Union (EU) or to leave it. But what does that have to do with web analytics? A lot! By analysing the search behaviour of the British before the referendum, we can try to predict the outcome of the vote. One way to do this is to use Google Trends: a search tool that makes it possible to see the number of searches for specific keywords, topics and phrases for a certain period of time.
On Google Trends we can see for example that the search interest in the topics around leaving the EU is greater than staying:
Source: Google Trends
Despite that the questions related to leaving and staying are very similar. It may indicate that the British want to know the potential consequences of Brexit before they decide how to vote.
Source: Google Trends
Another graph from Google Trends shows how the search of “Brexit debate” has changed during the past week:
Source: Google Trends
Brexit is an acronym for “British exit” and refers to the possibility of Britain leaving the EU.
Tomorrow we will see how the referendums results reflect the online discussions.
How exactly can we predict how people act offline based on their online behavior?
