Google Tracks Flu Trends
Category: InternetPosted: November 12, 2008 12:00PM
Author: Nemo
Google has added another item to the list of trends you can track using search history - flu outbreak trends. Google's philanthropic group has developed Flu Trends that tracks flu outbreaks as they happen. The search firm claims there is a close relation between searches for flu-related topics and the number of people who exhibit flu symptoms. Will certainly not a one-to-one correlation, examining the data allows Google to develop patterns based on state and regional searches. Since Google's data is more timely, it can predict flu trends before the Centers for Disease Control, which sometimes takes two weeks to assimilate and publish its data.
