| U.S. State | Relative rate of search queries for mittens by users in this state |
|---|---|
| Vermont | 100.0 |
| Maine | 94.0 |
| Minnesota | 81.0 |
| Alaska | 76.0 |
| Wisconsin | 71.0 |
| New Hampshire | 69.0 |
| North Dakota | 65.0 |
| Montana | 58.0 |
| Massachusetts | 53.0 |
| Wyoming | 48.0 |
| Michigan | 47.0 |
| South Dakota | 46.0 |
| Iowa | 44.0 |
| Colorado | 40.0 |
| Rhode Island | 39.0 |
| Connecticut | 38.0 |
| New York | 35.0 |
| Illinois | 34.0 |
| Idaho | 33.0 |
| Pennsylvania | 31.0 |
| Utah | 29.0 |
| New Jersey | 28.0 |
| Indiana | 27.0 |
| Washington | 27.0 |
| Delaware | 27.0 |
| Ohio | 27.0 |
| Oregon | 26.0 |
| Nebraska | 25.0 |
| Maryland | 24.0 |
| Missouri | 24.0 |
| Kansas | 24.0 |
| New Mexico | 23.0 |
| District of Columbia | 22.0 |
| Virginia | 21.0 |
| Oklahoma | 20.0 |
| Kentucky | 20.0 |
| North Carolina | 17.0 |
| Texas | 16.0 |
| Tennessee | 16.0 |
| California | 16.0 |
| Alabama | 15.0 |
| Georgia | 15.0 |
| Arizona | 15.0 |
| Louisiana | 14.0 |
| Nevada | 14.0 |
| Arkansas | 13.0 |
| South Carolina | 13.0 |
| Florida | 12.0 |
| Mississippi | 12.0 |
| Hawaii | 11.0 |
| West Virginia | 0.0 |
| Metric | Correlation with mittens |
|---|---|
| Latitude | 0.89 (Positive, strong) |
| Frost | 0.78 (Positive, strong) |
| HighSchoolGrad | 0.44 (Positive, moderate) |
| LifeExpectancy | 0.44 (Positive, moderate) |
| Income | 0.39 (Positive, weak) |
| Age | 0.3 (Positive, weak) |
| VotedForObama | 0.27 (Positive, weak) |
| Longitude | 0.14 (Positive, very weak) |
| PercentElderly | 0.08 (Positive, very weak) |
| Area | 0.04 (Positive, very weak) |
| Unemployment | -0.08 (Negative, very weak) |
| EnergyConsumption | -0.09 (Negative, very weak) |
| Density | -0.11 (Negative, very weak) |
| SameSexCouples | -0.14 (Negative, very weak) |
| Suicide | -0.15 (Negative, very weak) |
| VotedForBush | -0.23 (Negative, weak) |
| Rainfall | -0.28 (Negative, weak) |
| Obesity | -0.43 (Negative, moderate) |
| InfantMortality | -0.48 (Negative, moderate) |
| ViolentCrime | -0.49 (Negative, moderate) |
| Illiteracy | -0.61 (Negative, moderate) |
Mouse over a metric name to see what it means.
More info on metrics
This tool shows you how popular a Google search query is in each U.S. state, giving a ranking like the one you see in the left column. It then compares this ranking with other ways of ranking states, like average income or population density, using Spearman's rank correlation. The middle column shows the results of these comparisons, with the strongest correlations listed first. High numbers (close to 1.0) mean that the rankings "line up" closely, which may indicate a relationship between the search query and the ranking metric. For example, mittens tends to be searched by users who are in northerly states (high latitude) and states with a lot of frost. Low numbers (close to -1.0) indicate a negative relationship -- that is, the rankings are close to being opposites, as in "yoga" and "VotedForBush".
Example queries:
walmart costco
porsche chevy tahoe prius
mcdonalds kfc tofu
chimney air conditioning
earthquake flood fire tornado
guns hikes yoga nascar soccer hockey
cocaine meth alcohol
jay-z garth brooks
Be careful drawing conclusions from this data. For example, the fact that walmart shows a moderate correlation with "Obesity" does not imply that people who search for "walmart" are obese! It only means that states with a high obesity rate tend to have a high rate of users searching for walmart, and vice versa. You should not infer causality from this tool: In the walmart example, the high correlation is driven partly by the fact that both obesity and Walmart stores are prevalent in the southeastern U.S., and these two facts may have independent explanations.
Credits
This tool gets its raw search frequency data from Google Insights for Search, which provides aggregate statistics for all Google search activity from 2004 to the present.
The state metrics in the second column come from the U.S. Census Bureau and other sources. Mouse over the name of the metric to see more information about the source of that metric, or click here to view info on all metrics.
The app uses the Google Chart API to render the state heatmap.
The app runs under Google App Engine and was written by Doug Beeferman.
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