Legal Research

Google Flu Trends

I was on the Michael Smerconish radio show this morning, talking about Google Flu Trends, which tracks user search activity for flu-related terms.  Google has analyzed 5 years’ worth of search data and discovered that search activity correlates with the CDC’s data on flu outbreaks.  In other words, people search for information about the flu when it breaks out in their area.  Coverage via the NY Times and WSJ (sub required).

One woman called in during the show and basically asked, “So what?”  She felt that once the flu is spreading in her area, there’s not much that she can do.  I had to agree.  Other than giving me an easy way to search for a flu shot location near my home, Google Flu Trends isn’t going to make me any healthier.  It’s just a PR site for Google, a way for them to stay in the spotlight.  In fact, it’s just a specialized application of Google Trends, which was launched in May 2006.

(IMHO if it was Google Invasion of the Body Snatchers Trends, then maybe it’d be a lot more useful.)

Anyway, I talked to Michael about how search companies are starting to seriously data-mine the millions of search queries they receive each day.  This is what John Battelle calls the Database of Intentions.  I gave Michael a quick quiz, based on what I learned from the book Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why it Matters by Bill Tancer:

• During what week of the year do most people search about depression and its treatment?

• On what day of the week do porn searches spike?

• During which month does searches for prom dresses spike?

Based on his intuition, Michael guessed (in order), late December, Saturday night-early Sunday morning, and March.  If I didn’t have access to Tancer’s summary of search data, I would have agreed with him.  However, he was wrong on all 3 — the correct answers are the week of Thanksgiving, Friday night, and January.

I finished up by talking a bit about the status of Google’s anonymizing project.

Full post as published by Jenkins Webblits on November 12, 2008 (boomark / email).