Online Education

A previous original analysis article for Gluten Free Pages postulated that the most mature and fastest growth gluten free countries in the world were highly related to the wealth of the country, specifically the GDP per person.

The gluten free online demand AND wealth relationship turned out to be logarithmic with a close relationship for most countries. It was decided that this concept should be explored more. The next postulate was that perhaps this theory could be extended to states or regions within countries, and even cities.

A GFP analysis and article was created that explored the gluten free online demand growth rates of the top ten and bottom ten wealth states in America. The analysis showed that the poorest states either did not have data or it was very intermittent. For the top ten average income states (listed below), GF demand or growth rates were found to be very high.

A similar analysis was performed for Australian states (as Australia was found to be a higher ?celiac search’ per month country than the US). Similar results were found. The conclusion was drawn that the for the wealthy highest growth states to have a high sustained gluten free search growth rate that they required: a minimum population and high urbanisation. This may or may not be connected with healthcare availability and a willingness and education of doctors to test for celiac disease, considering that the US diagnosis rate may be under 10%.

America’s most wealthy states

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STATE??..??…. Average INCOME?… POPULATION

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Maryland????..,144?????..?.?5,296,486

New Jersey???..,470????????8,414,350

Connecticut???,422????????.3,405,565

Hawaii?????.?,160????????..1,211,537

Massachusetts?..,963????????.6,349,097

New Hampshire?,683????????.1,235,786

Alaska??????..,393????????.626,932

California?????,645????????33,871,648

Virginia??????,277?????????7,078,515

Minnesota????.,023?????????4,919,479

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ACTUAL HIGHEST GROWTH GF states

Google provides growth rate data for any phrase that has sufficient search volumes. For gluten free, as of late December 2009, the following America states were found to have the highest gluten free search rates.

State, 2009 annual growth rate index shown after the state (eg 2.0 = 200%)

(those with BOLD state text are in the top ten wealthiest USA states)

Colorado?..2.1

Oregon?. 3.0

Maine

New Hampshire?

Washington?. 2.3

Minnesota?.. 2.3

Rhode Island

Massachusetts?. 2.1

Utah

Connecticut?.. 2.0

You will notice that not all of the ?wealthiest’ states on the first list, are in the top ten current highest growth gluten free states above. A first point is that if a states wealth is based on finance industries or natural resources, the wealth may be concentrated in a few individuals hands and not evenly distributed amongst the people ? which is unlikely to lead to high GF search rates. This is potentially why Alaska and Hawaii were high wealth states, but not high gluten free demand states. Also certain races have certain dispositions (genes) to acquiring celiac disease. Europeans (Caucasians) seem to have a higher rate of this gene ? so this will influence the level of celiac disease in a community too.

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For the above TEN states two states only have data for the last year, so while New Hampshire and Utah are in the top ten, the limited and very volatile data is not useful for analysis. The other eight states have a VERY similar search growth pattern over the last two years (2008 to 2009). As is the general GF search pattern for America, there is a peak for November December, then a lull in January, February, March. However all of the states had a very strong growth pattern from April to December 2009.

For eight states, the table above shows the linear projection of the growth rate for the year. So while Colorado is listed by Google as being the current (December 2009) highest growth state, this is based on its very latest demand.

While high wealth, high education, highly trained medical practitioners are a precursor to good celiac diagnosis levels, high growth states do not necessarily correlate with ?market maturity’. However it is thought that since GF diagnosis rates are so low in the US (

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WHAT are the highest growth American cities?

A high growth state is naturally composed of high growth cities, however depending on the urbanisation, wealth and education level of the people in these cities will dictate how many of them contribute to the achieving the high growth rate of GF searches in the state as a whole. This is why it can be very instructive to see what the overall top ten Gluten free online demand growth cities in the USA are ..

Top ten American GF cities and population (Dec 2009)

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CITY???????..?Population

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Littleton, CO??..?41,986

Denver, CO????.2,927,911

Portland, OR???..575,930

Renton, WA????.82,548

Seattle, WA????.602,000

Minneapolis, MN?..101, 659

Albany, NY?????94,172

Boston, MA????…599,351

Salt Lake City, UT…181,743

Rochester, NY………219,773?

While Google does not provide growth data down to city level, it does at least provide the overall top ten list, as well as the top ten cities within each state. From the above list it can be seen that the top two GF growth cities in the USA are Littleton and Denver which are both in Colorado, which happens to be the current highest growth GF state in America. The third highest growth city Portland happens to be in the Second highest growth rate state OREGAN. The fourth and fifth highest growth rate cities Renton and Seattle are in Washington.

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The above correlations suggest that in this fledgling state of the GF market, that the highest growth cities have a very strong influence on the overall highest gluten free growth states status.

Below is the top ten city list for the top TWO gluten free growth states. You will see from the number next to the city what Google considers its relative gluten free growth rate to be, for that state. Curiously the top two cities in the USA Littleton, CO Denver, CO are ranked at number two and eight on the Colorado list. For The second highest state Oregon, the only city on its list that makes the top ten of all American cities is Portland. None of Maine’s top ten cities make it on the American top ten list.

What the states’ city list does show is how important it is for a whole range of cities within the top states to contribute to the overall states gluten free growth rate. For instance Maine has no cities in the top ten American cities list and its second city New Gloucester has only 0.745 the growth rate of its top city, Scarborough. When you look at the cities in the highest GF growth state Colorado, seven of its cities have a relative growth rate above 0.745. This means for Maine that either Scarborough is a very, very high growth city (which it is not as it doesn’t rate in the top ten American cities) OR that many of Maine’s cities all have a very high growth rate.

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Top ten GF cities in Colorado (Dec 2009)

CITY………….GF Growth Ratio

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Grand Junction…….1.0

Littleton……………..0.91

Colorado Springs…..0.885

Boulder………………0.84

Durango……………..0.81

Aurora………………..0.775

Denver……………….0.755

Englewood…………..0.66

Ft Collins…………….0.625

Top ten GF cities in Oregon (Dec 2009)

City…………………..GF Growth Ratio

Canby………………..1.0

Troutdale…………….0.885

Springfield…………..0.84

Aurora………………..0.735

Ashland………………0.69

Roseburg……………..0.645

Bend…………………..0.57

Corvallis………………0.55

Beaverton…………….0.475

Portland……………….0.46

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CONCLUSION

Google releases growth rate data on a weekly basis, and this trend information is only for one term ? ?gluten free’. So it is expected that state and city order may change to some degree. However as four of the wealthiest states (GDP per person) Maine; New Hampshire; Massachusetts; Connecticut also rank in the top ten growth rate cities on Google for this week, it appears that the wealth of the state still does correlate somewhat with the growth rate of a state.

The individual state cities list shows that for a state to rank high in overall growth rate for GF information searches, that it needs one or two cities to rank very well (for example Littleton and Denver in Colorado) or for many cities to rank fairly well in the state.

GF diagnosis rates hover around 5% and most states are finding explosive online gluten free searches growth, which parallels real world sales. This report shows the current GF hotspots around America.

Tags: American, Connected, doctors, Free, Gluten, Highest, Income, Levels, Main, online, States