Google Trends for the Flu
November 13th, 2008 by Nate LinnellCan searches on Google for flu-related keywords predict increases and decreases in the number of flu cases? That is a question the folks over at Google wanted to find out.
After compiling the search-related data, they worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to compare the data to actual flu outbreaks around the country. What they found was that there was a very close correlation between the two.
Google decided to use this data to try and help individuals across the country find out the level of flu activity in their area. They have created a Flu Trends tool through Google.org that displays the data in a chart that can be drilled into – to show individual states.
One really nice aspect of the tool is that the data is current where as the data that comes from the CDC lags by a couple weeks. Because of this, you can better anticipate oncoming flu activity before the CDC releases its data and have already begun to take preventive measure to help avoid catching the flu.
To get a better visual understanding of how the tool works, I pulled a few screenshots from the tool. The first one shows the overall flu activity throughout the country.
As you can see, the level of flu activity has been low so far this year. But, based on previous years, it is likely about to begin to increase. You can see that in certain states such as Mississippi, Arkansas, and Kentucky, the flu activity has already risen to the moderate level.
That got me thinking of what it looks like around my area.
Filtering the data for the DC area shows that flu activity has begun to increase, but is still at the low level.
This would seem to indicate that there isn’t much risk of the flu at this point. But, that it is beginning to have an upwards trend. So, I should start being a bit more careful in my attempts to avoid contracting the flu this season.
I’ll probably continue to revisit Google Flu Trends to see if what I see living in the DC area matches with what the tool is telling me. And, who knows, maybe it can be one way that I can try to avoid the flu this year.
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