There’s been a great deal of reporting today about Google.org’s new Google Flu Trends site. Google’s non-profit arm has teamed with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to post a state-by-state analysis of flu-related word searches. Keyword searches used as a sensing mechanism of geographic trends is an exciting development that has some wide-ranging implications for public health issues.
The new site isn’t that compelling from a technology standpoint as it harnesses Google Trends, a service that’s been online for some time, including geographic targeted searching. The real-time nature of this new service is the most compelling aspect. The CDC’s own data closely mirrors Google’s data, but there’s a two-week lag in the CDC reporting, whereas Google’s reports are real-time.
At present the site is simply at the state level. I’m hoping the detail gets more granular in order to have an impact on how we behave and respond to such viruses. Given the impending inevitability of another pandemic strain of the flu, this service provides a valuable means to augment other data sources. But, in the face of the panic of a pandemic, I wonder how accurate the search word accuracy would become.
