Google Trends: A Web-Based Tool for Real-Time Surveillance of Disease Outbreaks

• Published in: Clinical infectious diseases Vol. 49; no. 10; pp. 1557 - 1564
• Main Authors: Carneiro, Herman Anthony, Mylonakis, Eleftherios
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford The University of Chicago Press 15.11.2009; University of Chicago Press; Oxford University Press
• Subjects: Biological and medical sciences; Data Collection - methods; Disease control; Disease Outbreaks; Disease prevention; Epidemics; Epidemiology; Humans; Infectious diseases; Influenza; Influenza A virus; Influenza, Human - epidemiology; Internet; Medical sciences; Preventive medicine; Search engines; Search terms; Surfing; SURFING THE WEB; Surveillance; Web services; West Nile virus; Epidemic; Infection; Surveillance
• ISSN: 1058-4838; 1537-6591
• DOI: 10.1086/630200

Google Flu Trends can detect regional outbreaks of influenza 7–10 days before conventional Centers for Disease Control and Prevention surveillance systems. We describe the Google Trends tool, explain how the data are processed, present examples, and discuss its strengths and limitations. Google Trends shows great promise as a timely, robust, and sensitive surveillance system. It is best used for surveillance of epidemics and diseases with high prevalences and is currently better suited to track disease activity in developed countries, because to be most effective, it requires large populations of Web search users. Spikes in search volume are currently hard to interpret but have the benefit of increasing vigilance. Google should work with public health care practitioners to develop specialized tools, using Google Flu Trends as a blueprint, to track infectious diseases. Suitable Web search query proxies for diseases need to be established for specialized tools or syndromic surveillance. This unique and innovative technology takes us one step closer to true real-time outbreak surveillance.