‘GDP’ the least-understood financial term – City Index

By Andrei Skvarsky.

Of the multitude of financial terms, “gross domestic product (GDP)” is generally the least-understood one, according to a study by London-based financial services company City Index.

Definitions of GDP are on average googled 166,300 times a month and nearly 2m times a year worldwide, City Index said in a statement in citing the study, which aimed to find out how many times each of a selection of 51 financial terms was looked up on Google in a month and in a year.

“Acquisition” is looked up 130,700 times a month and more than 1.5m times a year, which makes it the next least-familiar term, the company said.

“Equity”, “principal” (a loan before any interest is added on) and “asset” rank third, fourth and fifth respectively on a City Index list arranged in ascending order of familiarity as based on how many times a month and year each term is googled.

Interestingly, terms one would presume to represent commonly known notions are still in the upper third of the list, “capital” ranking 10th with 28,000 searches a month, “interest” 13th (22,400), “bankruptcy” 14th (20,000), “dividends” 16th (18,000) and “investment” 17th (17,000).

Capital is commonly misinterpreted as having the same meaning as asset, City Index said.

The largest single proportion of monthly searches for GDP definitions – 23 percent – came from India. The Philippines was the source of 12 per cent of searches, the United States accounted for 12 per cent too and Britain for 6 per cent, the company said.

It said it had based the study on the Ahrefs search analytics tool.

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