I would look at Google trends rather than autocomplete. Their autocomplete tries to be smart and doesn't reflect actual search traffic.

See: Why won't my parakeet eat my diarrhea.

Looks like it only returns words that begin with consonants because of the "a". If you search for

"how much does an * cost in"

You get different results that begin with vowels as well as acronyms/abbreviations.

This study has ruined is ability to be reproduced, as whenever you attempt any of the searches, you get the study and many articles about the study, in the results, which reinforces the findings of the study.

It's a self-reinforcing study! The more you test it, the stronger its validity becomes!

As others have already stated, there are some problems with this "study." I'm too lazy to do this myself, but my guess is that when you actually redo this auto-complete search, and look at not just the top search, but rather the top 5 searches, you will find a lot of overlap in many of the state searches, which will probably show less state variation (with some exceptions of course, and possibly more regional homogeneity, which would be interesting.)

I love NY and Vermont.

Pound of Weed ----> Cord of Wood

I posted this as a comment on the article, but I'll share here as well...

This is kind of funny, but the methodology is suspect. For example, Lincoln Nebraska is a college dominated city so the result is no surprise, Omaha Nebraska has a much larger population and not really skewed so much toward a single demographic. When I run your search for Omaha the top result was drivers license. However we all know that your personal search history can affect results and I had been researching voter ID laws. When I try the search in a new incognito window... I get no results whatsoever! So, unfortunately, I'm going to have to firmly place this in the humor category.

I think the methodology here is off. It may not be that People in Florida and Alabama are looking for abortion prices. It could be people in Georgia price shopping neighboring states, then looking for taxis to get across the border.

This is a horrible metric; tons of these are clearly people googling about things somewhere other than where they live (c.f. Alaska, "gallon of milk").

This doesn't show California as obsessed with the price of housing, so I have to assume the methodology is flawed in some way.

"Succession" in Louisiana

I don't care if the methodology is suspect, I WANT TO BELIEVE...

Funny when you've contributed to your state's thing at least twice. I wonder whether it's the humid heat, or the need to chill lots of beer and cheese that makes Wisconsin obsessed with electricity.

Kentucky and Florida should make some sort of deal.

I'm not at all surprised to see what my hometown of Bismarck, ND is obsessed with.

Add 2015 to the title please.

Vermont is so quaint.

"The T" ??? What's Massachusetts going on about?