The civil unrest in oil producing regions in Northern Africa and the Middle East has caused a steep increase in retail gas prices in recent weeks. Overall, gas prices have trended higher throughout the past year and the effects are not just apparent at the pump, but also online. The average price per gallon of regular gasoline in the United States reached a 12 month high of $3.57/gal in the week ending March 14, 2011 as price-related gasoline search variations also increased. The share of gas price-related variations have remained high although there was a decline in the week ending March 12, 2011, possibly due to the fact that gas prices have stopped increasing and consumers may have resigned themselves to higher prices.

Increasingly sensitive to rising gas prices, consumers have turned to the Internet to help ease the financial burden of filling their tanks. The volume of searches for the search term ‘gas price’ increased 22x was among the fastest growing terms within the set of gas price variations for the 4 weeks ending March 12, 2011 as compared to one month ago. Additionally, many of the terms that were new to driving traffic during the past 4 weeks such as ‘gas prices 28 month high’, ‘gas prices spike’, and ‘gas prices 7 days’ show how interest has shifted to the tracking of gas prices. Location-specific searches have also increased from consumers seeking gas price information near their homes.

Thanks to James Varughese, an Analyst in our Custom Data & Analytics team for this analysis on gas prices.