Shared Resources

We all generate resources in the course of our research which could be of interest and benefit to others. On this page I share resources which I've created and believe are of general interest. Please feel free to make use of anything here and offer acknowledgement if used in your research or for something published online. Thanks.

Google Trends Metro Area GIS Shape File


To my knowledge, Google Trends has not provide an official GIS shapefile indicating the spatial regions over which their US metro area data are defined. Using the US Census Bureau county designations for 2018, I've generated this shape file which can be used to map spatial data to Trends metro areas.
Census Bureau boundaries appear to map exactly, with the exception of 5 counties which are divided into differing trends metro areas: Kern and Riverside (CA), Apache (AZ), Lea (NM), and Oneida (NY). I've done my best to appropriately draw these divisions based on screenshots of the corresponding Trends metro areas. The full GIS set of files used to create this shape file can be made available upon request.
Note: The Google Trends metro area boundaries almost follow the Designated Market Area (DMA) boundaries, but are not precise for certain regions. This shapefile is based off of the actual metro area boundaries displayed by Google Trends as of April, 2020.