Search Volume for Crypto Terms has Been Correlating With the Price

Search Traffic for Crypto has Been Correlating With the Price of Cryptocurrency, and it’s the Same Deal for Site Traffic (so Thanks for Reading)

Search volume for cryptocurrency related terms has been correlating with the value of the cryptocurrency market over time. The same is true for the term Bitcoin and Bitcoin’s price.

We at our site have personally picked up on this trend, as our site gets enough of its visitors from natural search traffic for it to be noticeable to us. However, I can also confirm this by comparing Google Trends data for crypto (or for just Bitcoin) with cryptocurrency price data or Bitcoin’s price data (see for example the total market cap or Bitcoin’s price).

There is only a slight lack of correlation there, and this is explained by the fact that even though Bitcoin was down a bit in mid-January, the altcoin market was booming (so crypto enthusiasm was high, even though Bitcoin wasn’t).

What is interesting is that this trend extends all the way back to the first day 1 of crypto being searched on Google back in November 2010.

When crypto first entered the mainstream in 2013, there was an uptick in searches. When that hype died down, traffic died down. When we worked on the site from 2015 – 2016 there was never much traffic. I had always assumed it had to do with the site more than search trends. Now, since 2017 the traffic and price of the crypto market as a whole have correlated.

This makes complete logical sense when you think about it, but it is none-the-less interesting to note. It also gives everyone an inside view of crypto prices. If you see the search traffic trending down, take it as a hint that feelings are bearish. If you see it ramping up, it can be seen as an indicator that people are bullish.

I would stress that this is just one of many useful indicators (don’t go investing based only that). For those of us still searching for crypto, we now have one extra tool in our tool belt. Pretty neat and useful, no?

TIP: When looking at trends, ideally you ought to wait for a trend to be confirmed. A slight short-term uptick in price or search volume isn’t much of a trend. A large increase or, even better, a few days of increasing price and volume is more significant.