“How to create a company” trends

Google trends on “set up a business” in the UK follows the same trend as realised business creation.

“How to create a company” might be the first Google search before the actual company registration. Using the Google trends data for the “set up a business” phrase we explore the relationship between google searches and realised business creation in the UK. The algorithm collects not only data for the “set up a business” phrase. It further reports top and rising searches, which include phrases like “set up business bank account”, “set up business facebook page”, “how to set up your own firm”, “make an etsy business” etc.

We collect data for 2019 and 2020 and calculate the ratio of 2020/2019, as we did for the business creation. Yet, for comparability purposes, we calculate the indexed, in week 1, ratio for both google searches and business creation.