When Google doesn’t give you the answers…

Some of the articles I write disappear into the online ether like they never existed. I can usually predict which ones – the more niche money articles, the really generic ones, the self-congratulatory corporate ones. Some are more popular, and again, you can usually predict which ones – anything that answers one of those questions I can never quite get Google to adequately answer for me. When I Google a question and I can’t get any decent, New Zealand-relevant data, I know it’s going to be a useful article.

In that category, there’s an article like ‘How much to spend on your renovation’ that I wrote for Westpac. Great fun, with local numbers, and answered a question people always want to know. Unfortunately it’s well out of date now; construction costs have skyrocketed by about 30% since it was published, so you can’t rely on the numbers. ‘How much do you need to retire in comfort?’ was also popular for a while there, until a few other places caught up and published some helpful savings numbers for retirement. Most popular of all was ’10 fantastic places to raise a family in New Zealand’, which nobody expected to do well, but pops up organically in Google all the time when you search for related topics like ‘where to live in nz’.

Another one that’s been popular is ‘How much does it cost to raise a child in New Zealand?’. Jasmine sent me a text showing it as a Facebook article with 575 comments; apparently it’s the most-read Juno article on the site. Obviously I haven’t read any of the comments, I’m not crazy. I pulled together the research I could find, which means the results are going to be a guideline at best. There’s plenty of room for argument. And of course, that story combines two highly emotive topics: money and parenting. Both vaguely taboo as far as talking to strangers goes. So when you put them together, you’re always going to raise some hackles. Also, my sense of humour isn’t going to be to everyone’s tastes. It’s dark and dry; I rein it in but the phrase ‘expensive little blighters’ might have made its way in there.

You think Google has all the answers and it usually does. But when you live in New Zealand, you really want local information and data. Statistics NZ is a treasure trove of information, provided you like your treasure thoroughly buried in an enormous spreadsheet. If you don’t like Excel, you’re certainly not going to like finding anything at Statistics NZ. Luckily, I love spreadsheets. A lot of my job entails finding information and pulling it together into something that answers that question – the one Google doesn’t give you a simple answer to. When it goes right, it’s a lot of fun, and the result can be helpful (or at least thought-provoking) to a surprisingly wide audience.