Detect Influenza outbreaks with web searches
Each week, millions of users around the world search for online health information. As you might expect, there are more flu-related searches during flu season, more allergy-related searches during allergy season, and more sunburn-related searches during the summer. You can explore all of these phenomena using Google Trends. But can search query trends provide an accurate, reliable model of real-world phenomena?
We have found a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms. Of course, not every person who searches for "flu" is actually sick, but a pattern emerges when all the flu-related search queries from each state and region are added together. We compared our query counts with data from a surveillance system managed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and discovered that some search queries tend to be popular exactly when flu season is happening. By counting how often we see these search queries, we can estimate how much flu is circulating in various regions of the United States. ...
From: How does this work?, Google Flu Trends, Google, 2008
Labels: disaster management, emergency management, Google, Influenza Pandemic, Web Search
2 Comments:
Chris Johnson said...
natural *fonomina*??
perhaps "phenomena" is the word intended.
December 03, 2008 2:12 PM
Tom Worthington said...
Chris Johnson said December 03, 2008 2:12 PM:
>natural *fonomina*??
>perhaps "phenomena" is the word intended.
Yes, thanks, fixed.
Or perhaps "webomina" would be the correct term? ;-)
December 03, 2008 4:04 PM
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