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# Study Finds Google Hits Correspond With Art Sales
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/study-finds-google-hits-corresponds-with-art-sales/
- Published: 2012-08-28T16:16:34.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:36:20.000Z
- Description: A researcher at Washington State University has used Google hits as an indicator of an artist's fame in a study measuring the factors that influence sales at auction.
- Author: Jillian Steinhauer
- Tags: News, Auctions, Google, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 06:51 (2012, 2013, part 1)

[![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2012/08/google-search-famous-box-6402.jpg "google-search-famous-box-6402")](http://lmgtfy.com/?q=who+is+the+most+famous+artist&ref=hyperallergic.com)

Admit it: we’ve all Googled ourselves and tried to judge our fame based on Google search results. Because like it or not, the search engine is an indicator of a person’s cultural popularity. Now a researcher at Washington State University has used Google hits as an indicator of an artist’s fame in a [study](http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/124922/2/Tekindor.pdf?ref=hyperallergic.com) measuring the factors that influence sales at auction.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2012/08/screen-shot-2012-08-28-at-12-11-17-pm.png)

Figure 1 from Tekindor’s paper is titled “Mean price of artists and artists’ rank trend.” (via ageconsearch.umn.edu)

Arzu Aysin Tekindor, a PhD candidate in the School of Economic Sciences, set out to examine the relationship between the value of paintings and the fame of their creators. She sampled a group of 1,100 Impressionist and modern works auctioned at Christie’s and Sotheby’s between 1998 and 2011, by such 19th- and 20th-century artists as Degas, Picasso, Munch and Matisse. Many of her findings — which she notes are still preliminary — are fairly straightforward: that prices increased for paintings showing an artist’s characteristic subject matter or style, that an artist’s signature increased the value of a work.

But Tekindor also studied Google hits as an indicator of “artist popularity effect,” and she found that a 1% increase in Google hits resulted in a price increase of 38%. That’s not bad! Now the real question is: can artists game the system? And if so, who will figure out how to game it first?

*h/t* [*Pacific Standard*](http://www.psmag.com/uncategorized/paint-by-numbers-2-45357/?ref=hyperallergic.com)