A group of researchers at Yahoo analyzed queries fed into the company’s search engine and found that using Web-search data as a way to spot emerging trends isn’t always the best way to spot a trend.

They studied the volume of search queries related to a particular movie, song, and video game up to six weeks before each came out, then compared these results with those produced using traditional methods. Search-based predictions fared only a little better than these methods, and were sometimes worse. The research is published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.