Google Provides Flu Season Surveillance

One of the worst things about the Autumn and Winter months is the fact that you’re more than likely to pick up a case of the sniffles between September and April than you are during the summer.

It seems that most of us at the first sign of an ache or pain or a bout of sneezing keys in some kind of flu related search to Google. The search company found that there was a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms and while it comes right out and says not everyone who searches flu is ill, there is a pattern that emerges when all the flu-related search queries from each state and region are added together.

The company then compared its query counts with data from a surveillance system managed by the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and discovered that certain search queries tend to be popular right when flu season kicks in. By counting how often Google sees these search queries, it can tell us how much flu is circulating in our state. Neat.

Traditional flu surveillance systems (you know, doctors diagnosing sick people) take 1-2 weeks to collect and release surveillance data, but Google search queries can be automatically counted very quickly. By making flu estimates available each day, Google Flu Trends may provide an early-warning system for outbreaks of influenza.

Get your flu shots and wrap up warm, people. Flu season is upon us.

Check out Google’s official blog post about Google Flu Trends or Flu Trends itself to see how the flu season is shaping up this year.