Now Google Know When You’re Going to be Sick
Posted by: fitzgeraldsteele on: November 20, 2008
Those kids at Google are pretty creative, by which I mean that they come up with unique solutions to problems that are useful to lots of people.
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 systems.
In other words, people search for ‘flu’ when the have the flu. So Google knows right away when people are getting the flu, as opposed to the CDC, who has to wait for aggregated reports from around the country.
If you look at the data (and you know you want to), there seems to be two peaks to the flu season…one in Dec and one in Feb/March. Anyone know why this is? Two strains of flu?
Last year, our whole family was out with the flu from Christmas to Valentines Day. Luckily, Sara and I never totally sick at the same time, but T was coughy/runny nosed through the whole thing. Maybe one day Google will be able to search our bodies for all the germs and filter them out. =)
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Jerry’s Facebook Status
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