Web Talk

From Google: “We’ve found that certain search terms are good indicators of flu activity. Google Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity in your state up to two weeks faster than traditional flu surveillance systems.”

The guys at Google have created something amazing…again! As a matter of fact right after the exciting news about the new Gmail features namely voice and video chat, I have found an interesting article speaking about Google Flu Trends. But what is it? The G-guys living and creating at Mountain View have spot an interesting relationship (shown by using Google Trends)  between flu and what people search on the Internet while they are sick. Simple said, the more people are sick the more they tend to search articles and news talking about flu on Google. If you compare the number of people searching for flu keywords to the data coming from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) you will get an interesting graph like the one on top of the article showing you that there is really a “link” between flu and people searching on Google! That’s not surprising at all to say the least since, it is in the human nature to collect as much as data possible regarding issues and problems affecting it. If you want to learn more about this interesting research, you can download a PDF document by Google. Here instead you can find the link to the original news.