This is the first installment of my new project, Michigan Outdoor Recreation Search Interest. This project will look at daily Google search interest from Michigan for 10 forms of outdoor recreation: atving, boating, camping, fishing, hiking, kayaking, rving, hunting, skiing, and snowmobiling. Search trends for these activities are likely related to the popularity and interest in these activities in general.

This project is similar to my existing Northern Michigan Search interest project where I look at monthly search interest for over 200 places in Northern Michigan. This project will contain less search terms but more granular daily data. This should allow more flexible statistical and data science techniques while easing struggles to pull data from Google trends via pytrends. In fact, if absolutely necessary it might be possible to pull the data directly from Google’s interface.

From a results and interest point of view, outdoor recreation is very important to many people in Michigan and Michigan is famous for its natural resources. This project will help to understand and forecast levels of interest for various activities.