gtrendsR Google Trends in R

Question

A question about Google Trends package gtrendsR.

I have written my code as follows:

    install.packages('gtrendsR')
    library(gtrendsR)

# Define the key words

    keywords = c("x", "y", "d", "e", "f")

# Set the geographic area: DE = Germany; DK = Denmark

    country = c('DE','DK')

# Set the time window

    CurrentDate <- Sys.Date()
    time=("2018-01-01 CurrentDate")

# Set channels

    channel = 'web'
    trends = gtrends(keywords, gprop = channel, geo = country, time = time)

R gives me two errors: (1) Error in gtrends(keywords, gprop = channel, geo = country, time = time) : (length(keyword)%%length(geo) == 0) || (length(geo)%%length(keyword) == .... is not TRUE which appears because I try to use two locations; (2) Cannot parse the supplied time format., if I only leave 'DE' for the country. Then, it does not read the CurrentDate value.

My question is how I should write the code to get more than one country at the time? And how should I code the date to get the most recent date every time I run the code?

Thank you.

Answer 1

I found two issues in your approach:

1. Something is wrong with the keyword argument and not with geo. I could not guess it. Maybe its length.
2. Time span is given in a wrong format: "2018-01-01 CurrentDate" From the help of gtrends:

"Y-m-d Y-m-d" Time span between two dates (ex.: "2010-01-01 2010-04-03").

Issue #1 prevents the occurence of issue #2.

library(gtrendsR)

# Define the key words
# DOES NOT WORK: keywords <- c("x", "y", "d", "e", "f")
# WORKS:
keywords <- c("y", "d", "e", "z")

# Set the time window
time <- paste0("2018-01-01", Sys.Date())

# Set channels
channel <- "web"

# Set the geographic area: DE = Germany; DK = Denmark
country <- c("DE", "DK")

res <- gtrends(keywords, gprop = channel, country, time = time)

# output
head(res$interest_over_time)
        date hits keyword geo                  time gprop category
1 2018-01-07   34       y  DK 2018-01-01 2021-05-21   web        0
2 2018-01-14   36       y  DK 2018-01-01 2021-05-21   web        0
3 2018-01-21   36       y  DK 2018-01-01 2021-05-21   web        0
4 2018-01-28   34       y  DK 2018-01-01 2021-05-21   web        0
5 2018-02-04   27       y  DK 2018-01-01 2021-05-21   web        0
6 2018-02-11   33       y  DK 2018-01-01 2021-05-21   web        0