Paper written for the CIRET 2012 conference

In this paper we attempt to examine the applicability of Google Insights for Search in terms of household consumption, retail sale trends, and the nowcasting of car sales in Hungary. There have been several successful attempts to use Google data in a similar way, usually in connection with U.S. economic indicators. Our goal, however, is an analysis of consumption indicators on the basis of Internet search in a country where Internet penetration is lagging behind that of the U.S. and Western Europe.