Can google trends improve sales forecasts on a product level?

Combining standard time series models with search query data can be helpful in predicting sales. We include the search volume of company as well as product-related keywords provided by Google Trends as new predictors in models to forecast sales on a product level. Using weekly data from January 2015 to December 2016 of two products of the audio company Sennheiser we find evidence that using Google Trends data can enhance the prediction performance of conventional models.