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I want to compare the popularity of several fish types: The way I'm doing it is by using a reference keyword (in this case "fish") and comparing it to whatever fish I'm interested in. I enter both keywords (fish and tuna or fish and salmon etc) in Google trends and it gives me an average of both keywords. Then I simply divide these averages and get an OR. I keep repeating this process for each fish type. Can I do that? And would that be called an Odds ratio?

I'm hoping that this way I can get a feel of how popular each fish type is.

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    $\begingroup$ Why do you feel the need to compute an odds ratio to compare averages? $\endgroup$
    – StatsStudent
    Commented Jan 26, 2019 at 17:06

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The y-axis values returned by Google Trends are not odds -- it's not clear what exactly they are, to be honest -- so their ratios are not odds ratios.

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  • $\begingroup$ No, but they do compare two keywords when I enter them. I'm thinking that if I use the word fish as a reference then I can calculate how popular a given keyword is compared to the word fish. Can I do that? Maybe it's not called odds ratio then? $\endgroup$
    – Blits
    Commented Jan 26, 2019 at 17:01
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    $\begingroup$ Right, I see no reason why you can't compare the popularity of these terms using the metrics they give, I just don't think "odds ratio" is an appropriate name for those ratios. $\endgroup$
    – Jake Westfall
    Commented Jan 26, 2019 at 17:03
  • $\begingroup$ Moreover, whatever Google trends returns, it is standardized. $\endgroup$
    – Tim
    Commented Jan 26, 2019 at 17:16

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