Google Adds Advanced Statistics Search Feature

Statistics junkies may soon have to guard themselves against Google addiction. The search giant announced a new search feature this afternoon, and said feature looks set to find and present public data with rather remarkable ease.

Curious about population sizes or unemployment rates? Pick a city and then just start searching. In many cases, Google will return a recent statistic in bold font and a little graph showing how the number’s changed over time. Click on the graph, and you should even be able to add and subtract specific counties.

Interesting, right? Then, although this recession-appropriate population and unemployment info is all that’s currently available, there’s a lot more stuff around the corner.

On the Official Google Blog, Product Manager Ola Rosling explained, "There are statistics for prices of cookies, CO2 emissions, asthma frequency, high school graduation rates, bakers’ salaries, number of wildfires, and the list goes on."

Rosling also noted, "All the data we’ve used in this first launch are produced and published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau’s Population Division," so the information is all sure to be pretty trustworthy.