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Wednesday, April 15, 2015
Google Trends: A new frontier for monitoring population health?
London School of Hygiene: Google dominates the market for internet search engines and is so
pervasive that the term “to Google” has entered everyday use in a way
that none of its competitors has. In Europe it isused in 85% of internet
searches while in the US, it accounts for 65%. In 2012, Google handled
approximately 1.2 trillion searches globally, or 3.3 billion searches
per day. In an era where web searches and transactions are recorded
instantaneously, this activity generates a massive volume of data whose
uses are often unexpected and virtually limitless. While individuals search for many things online, such as consumer
goods and services, there is also significant search activity related to
health concerns. In fact, approximately 3% to 5% of worldwide search
traffic involves some type of health counselling. Population health
researchers are also starting to take note of the potential of these
data. Google search engine queries have now been used as a source of
data for population health research, from studying influenza outbreaks
to monitoring interest in e-cigarettes. Yet, the use of Google Trends,
the dataset that collects and organises such queries, is still in its
infancy for public health research. It is imperative that population
health researchers are aware of such non-traditional tools to answer
pressing research questions.