Houston ranks fourth among the most anxious cities in the United States based on a new analysis of online search behavior released by comparison platform Compare the Market on an unspecified recent date.
Researchers conducted the study across major U.S. cities using Google search data collected over the past 12 months to measure how often residents searched for information related to anxiety.
The study focused on the exact phrase “anxiety symptoms” and used the total volume of searches in each city as an indicator of the level of public concern about anxiety.
Data from the report show that people in Houston entered the phrase “anxiety symptoms” into Google about 23,000 times during the one-year period covered by the analysis.
The search volume for Houston ranked as the fourth highest among all U.S. cities included in the Compare the Market study.
Researchers reported that only three other U.S. cities recorded more searches for “anxiety symptoms” than Houston, placing the Texas city near the top of the national list.
The study ranked Houston ahead of several other large metropolitan areas, including Atlanta, Dallas, San Antonio, and Las Vegas, based on the number of anxiety-related searches.
Compare the Market stated that the rankings reflect search behavior and not medical diagnoses or confirmed rates of clinical anxiety in the population.
The methodology treated each Google search for “anxiety symptoms” as a data point for measuring how frequently residents in each city sought information about possible anxiety-related issues.
The report did not include city-level details on population-adjusted rates in the summary, and it presented the rankings using total search counts as the primary comparison metric.
Houston’s reported 23,000 searches placed it within a small group of cities with the highest overall anxiety-related search activity in the United States.
The report noted that search behavior can capture early or informal attempts by residents to understand symptoms before seeking professional medical or mental health support.
Texas appeared prominently in the rankings, with multiple cities from the state listed among the top locations for anxiety-related searches.
Dallas ranked sixth in the national comparison, with residents conducting approximately 12,680 searches for “anxiety symptoms” during the study period.
San Antonio ranked ninth, with about 12,000 searches for the same term, according to the Compare the Market data.
The presence of several Texas cities in the top tier of the rankings placed the state among those with the most frequent online inquiries about anxiety symptoms.
The report placed Houston above its Texas counterparts in both total search volume and overall ranking position on the national list.