Google Traffic: A Surprising Investment Strategy

🎯A portfolio of the top websites based on Google traffic has outperformed the S&P 500 over several time frames, from 5 years to 6 months.

📈Apple's strategic move to prioritize organic traffic growth around 2019, especially with their apps.apple.com subdomain, significantly contributed to their stock performance.

🚀Meta, owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, saw a 186% stock gain over two years, correlating with heavy organic search movements.

📉Etsy and particularly Trip Advisor suffered noticeable stock losses, reflecting potential correlations between declining search trends and company health.

💡While website data can provide interesting insights into attention and demand flows, it's not recommended as a primary strategy for stock picking.

What was the biggest winner in the 5-year and 2-year Google stocks portfolio?

—Apple emerged as the strongest performer in the 5-year period, while Meta (owners of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) saw the highest gains in the 2-year time frame.

How does organic traffic correlate with stock performance?

—While there is no direct correlation proven, a growing organic traffic trend for companies like Apple and Meta has coincided with positive stock performance, suggesting a possible connection worth further exploration.

Which websites were part of the 16 companies in the Google traffic stocks portfolio?

—The portfolio primarily included household names such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Netflix, and Trip Advisor, among others, indicating a preference for big US companies.

Is using Google traffic data a good investment strategy?

—The author clearly states that using Google traffic data to pick stocks is speculative and not recommended, due to the complex factors that influence stock prices.

What is the primary source of Apple's organic traffic growth?

—Apple's organic traffic growth was driven by the creation of apps.apple.com in 2019, which now generates around 150 million monthly visits, comprising roughly 33% of Apple's total organic traffic.

00:00Investing in the S&P 500 offers broad exposure to the top 500 US companies without significant research or stress.

01:04The mission was to determine if using Google search data could beat the S&P 500 by analyzing the top 100 websites.

02:0216 out of the 100 top websites made it into the Google traffic stocks portfolio, including household names like Amazon and Apple.

02:41Apple was the best performing stock in the 5-year period with over 250% gain, attributed partly to prioritized organic traffic growth since 2019.

04:19Apple's revenue in India grew 42% year-on-year in 2023, coinciding with a strategic move to open an online store in 2020.

05:30Meta saw an 186% stock price gain over the 2-year analysis, closely correlating with increased organic search and website visits.

06:10Etsy lost roughly 28% of its stock value, adding to the list of companies whose losses highlight the complexity of stock value movements.

07:02Despite outperforming the S&P 500 over chosen time frames, using the top 100 websites by Google traffic is not advised or guaranteed.