Venture Capital Trends – Google Finds More Venture Capital News But Less Interest in Venture Capital?

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The CB Insights team likes data and so on occasion, we examine other credible, external data sources.  We recently looked at Google Trends to see what it might suggest about what it suggests is happening with venture capital based on search volume trends.  The results as you’ll see below are counter-intuitive.

Globally, news related to venture capital has increased while search volume for the term “venture capital” has seemingly decreased as can be seen below.

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When we look at just the United States, the trend appears to be the same.  Surprisingly (to us), as the volume of news has increased, the search volume which we take as a proxy for interest in venture capital seems to have decreased.

Of course, the methods that Google Trends uses to display and index this data are a bit opaque and so methodological reasons could drive this counter-intuitive trend.  Or perhaps this is suggestive of a real decline in the interest in venture capital?  What do you think?