Predicting Stock Market Activity: Role of Google Search Engine

The main objective of this study was to investigate whether searching firm's ticker symbol and name in Google can predict its future stock market activities. In so doing, the data related to firms' ticker symbol and firms' name were collected using Google Trend and stock market activity was measured using four proxies, namely abnormal return, return volatility, stock trading volume and stock trading count. In order to meet the main objective of the study, multiple regression and panel regression were used over13082 firm- month observation during the years between 2005 and 2018. The results showed that the future market activity, including return volatility, stock trading volume and stock trading count, increased with searching the firms' ticker and name in Google. However, there was no significant relationship between the future abnormal return and Google searches. Findings also showed that future market activity can be predicted using Google searches. In addition, there was a more significant relationship between the searched firms' ticker symbol than the searched firms' name and future market activity.