Hal Varian: "Google Trends/Search Insights data could be useful in short term predictions of economic variables"

Hal Varian writes: "In an earlier blog post, we suggested that Google Trends/Search Insights data could be useful in short term predictions of economic variables. Given the importance of initial claims as a macroeconomic predictor, we thought it would be useful to try to forecast this economic metric. The initial claims data is available from the Department of Labor, while the Google Trends data for relevant categories is available here."
http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2009/07/posted-by-hal-varian-chief-economist.html