Interesting result at Google Trends for MINI. It seems to indicate that the greatest interest in the vehicle is in Athens, Greece and that the U.S. cities with the most interest in the vehicle (based on web search term data) are primarily in California (although Washington, Oregon, Florida and Texas also made the top 10). I was rather surprised to see a precipitious drop off in inquiry about the MINI starting in 2007. I wonder if this is sort of a verdict on the mass appeal of the 2007?

 

I doubt it has any revelance to the new model... before I joined this board, I didn't even know there was a new model. Neither did any of my other automotive friends.

MINI needs to do more advertising to announce the new car... maybe ads showing off the newly-increased fuel economy.

 

Actually, as I read the Google data, commencing with the announcement of the new 2007 in magazine articles in August 2006, inquiry about the car dropped precipitiously and had only a small rebound when, in February 2007, an article appeared about the MINI diesel and MINI One.

 

You gotta be kidding. Greek, Italian, Maltese, Dutch, French, Croation, and Catalan beat English in MINI inquiries? Do the Brits and Yanks know all they want to know about the MINI, and thus are not making inquiries? This is hard to believe. Maltese???

 

Maltese is an official language of the European Union and spoken in Malta. Canada, Australia, United States, United Kingdom, Gibralter and Tunisia. It is the only arabic dialect that is printed using latin characters. Combine this with the ubiquitious QWERTY keyboard, what the statistics may be telling us is that there is large interest by western arabic speakers where QWERTY keyboards are the standard. Of course this is merely an educated guess based on the data.

 

This is one of the silliest summations I think I have ever heard.

Google queries being down due to a new model? ROFL! You are really reaching there. I never Googled Mini, yet I own a new one. Wonder why that is?

 

You didn't have time. You were too busy driving MINI USA crazy. Judging from their website inaccuraciers, they still haven't recovered.

 

Austin, TX????!!!! And here we are stuck hours away from any MINI dealer! A 1.5Million population, 37th in US, 21% growth, and a lot of MINIs running around would seem like a decent place for one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_o...tistical_Areas

Hello MINIUSA!!!

 

The statistics don't lie - we merely need a cogent theory to explain the results.

 

There is that. But I didn't need Google to get there.

"There are lies, damn lies, and statistics." There is a reason why that quote exists. I have a degree in Statistical Analysis. What statistics conclude is up to the person interpreting them when in the face of not enough data points. Allow me to give you some other truths about those statistics.

1) People are using Google less to find information about the Mini and opting to going to a dealership instead.
2) The median age group of the Mini buyer has shifted and the new group is less inclined to use the Internet in the decision process to purchase an automobile.
3) People who have previously searched Mini via Google have bookmarked all the Internet related data they need to no longer need Google.

There is nothing that can truthfully be drawn from that data. There is not enough information to be able to make any accurate summation. Any conclusion you draw from that data is strictly a guess.

 

Agreed, however, it can be an "educated guess". One of my assumptions would be that the majority of the Google Mini Cooper search activity is generated from new searches, ergo, it is more of a measure of present buzz among those making an inquiry for the first time.

From this assumption the data would appear to show a decrease in search activity after announcement of the 2007 changes.

Therefore, the data may show that there is less interest about the new MINI among prospective buyers than there was with the prior model years.

Obviously, YMMV based on the underlying assumptions and further information that may be gleaned from the sample. This does not mean that the 2007 is inferior to the prior incarnation, just that it has not captured the imagination of potential buyers in the same numbers as the previous generation.

 

I actually emailed them because the TX place names on the dealer locator map were totally trashed. They actually cleaned it up fairly quickly. I thought that was cool

 

Or, it may mean that information is readily available from other sources, and fewer people are resorting to Google to find info.

Maltese inquiries beat all English enquires (Britain, USA, Canada, Australia...)? That has to mean English speakers are not using Google, or the data is totally wacko.

 

I dunno about you guys, but when I learned of a new MINI model I didn't use google... I went to MINI.com.

The only thing you can gather from this is that the number of google searches for mini cooper are down.

Did some quick searches for some other cars, they're going down too. Perhaps the cost of gas is taking the car-buying-wind out of consumer's sails? (Or would it be sales? :P)

 

Sure they do.

 

Actually, the numbers don't lie, but their interpretation may be faulty.

 

Sorry, but it is not an 'educated' guess. Even an educated guess requires more data points. This is just a graph of hits. It does not really qualify as statistical data on its own merit. If there were more data points to qualify the data, then we could have a nice statistical discussion.

It really is not worthy of discussion as all anyone can do is guess. What anyone would guess would just show a basis of perspective the person making the guess has. And even that is a guess.

We could blame it on global warming for all the data we have from the graph.

EDIT: If you really have to know how Mini is doing, just check BMW's financial reports. No need to guess. Seems they are on target to break all sales records.

 

The information is skewed. If you look at the cities, it's pretty obvious that they are using dealer sales to determine popular cities.

A vast number of Mini owners don't live where they bought their Mini's of course.

 

I think the data is generated from search terms used during a given period - not dealer sales.

It may be correct that there are not enough data points to draw a "correct" conclusion, but there are enough for us to cogitate on and speculate as to their significance, if any.

 

True, interpretation is one problem as is incomplete data or data gathered under incorrect assumptions. Determinations get made and the numbers are all "wrong" because they are isolated away from other factors. The numbers in and of themselves are fine, but seldom if ever tell the whole story. Happens all the time around here, anyway.

I'm sure Google's information says something. What? Who knows??

 

OK, I have played with Google Trends for a few minutes now and it is vastly apparent that we have no idea what half of this information represents. Searching for American Idol has Philipense/Bahamas/Singapore as the top regions, and the top languages are Tagalog (philipenes)/Icelandic/English.

Those numbers are surely accurate, but accurate of what, who knows. I'm motivated enough to write this, but not to read google documentation.

Play around with it yourself, do enough experimentation, and you can do you own statistical analysis to convince yourself that the MINI numbers are meaningless in any intuitive sense of the term.

 

Get Hollywood to do a Italian Job sequel and then check on google's search for MINIs. I'll bet it'd go WAY UP!!!

 

Coming to these kinds of conclusions based off of one of google's lab projects is a huuuge stretch. My job is web-based marketing projects and analytics. No one in the industry is going to form any kind of conclusion off of data such as this. It can be hard enough with proprietary software and advanced tracking systems on an in-house website to collect/track data that is quantifiable enough to make conclusions.

**Also, just to clarify, I am not saying this simply because I own and love an R56. I'd be saying the same thing if an R56 owner came on here and said they found a keyword string which proved that the R56 is generating tons of interest and that it is clearly the better designed vehicle.**