ArticlePloS one2016
Analysis of the Capacity of Google Trends to Measure Interest in Conservation Topics and the Role of Online News.
Article in PloS one, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers.
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Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed.
- Modeling infodemics on a global scale: A 30 countries study using epidemiological and social listening data.PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- Mapping digital popularity: Analyzing the network attention patterns of national forest parks based on Douyin (Tiktok) data.PloS one · 2026Article
- The impact of media on surge capacity in emergency departments: a study on rabies vaccination uptake.BMC emergency medicine · 2025Article
- Article
- Citizen science reporting indicates geographic and phenotypic drivers of road use and mortality in a threatened rattlesnake.Current zoology · 2023Article
- Text Analysis of Trends in Health Equity and Disparities From the Internal Revenue Service Tax Documentation Submitted by US Nonprofit Hospitals Between 2010 and 2019: Exploratory Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2023Article
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- The Spanish population's interest in climate change based on Internet searches.Humanities & social sciences communications · 2023Article
- COVID-19 in Memes: The Adaptive Response of Societies to the Pandemic?International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
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- Web-based searching for abortion information during health emergencies: a case study of Brazil during the 2015/2016 Zika outbreak.Sexual and reproductive health matters · 2021Article
- Social Data: An Underutilized Metric for Determining Participation in COVID-19 Vaccinations.Cureus · 2021Article
- Analyzing Public Interest in Metabolic Health-Related Search Terms During COVID-19 Using Google Trends.Cureus · 2021Article
- The roles of machine learning methods in limiting the spread of deadly diseases: A systematic review.Heliyon · 2021Review
- Wildlife and Newspaper Reporting in Iran: A Data Analysis Approach.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2021Article
- Using internet search data to understand information seeking behavior for health and conservation topics during the COVID-19 pandemic.Biological conservation · 2021Article
- Using Google Trends to Determine Current, Past, and Future Trends in the Reptile Pet Trade.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2021Article
- Article
- Correlation between the Spread of COVID-19 and the Interest in Personal Protective Measures in Poland and Portugal.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
With the continuous growth of internet usage, Google Trends has emerged as a source of information to investigate how social trends evolve over time. Knowing how the level of interest in conservation topics--approximated using Google search volume--varies over time can help support targeted conservation science communication. However, the evolution of search volume over time and the mechanisms that drive peaks in searches are poorly understood. We conducted time series analyses on Google search data from 2004 to 2013 to investigate: (i) whether interests in selected conservation topics have declined and (ii) the effect of news reporting and academic publishing on search volume. Although trends were sensitive to the term used as benchmark, we did not find that public interest towards conservation topics such as climate change, ecosystem services, deforestation, orangutan, invasive species and habitat loss was declining. We found, however, a robust downward trend for endangered species and an upward trend for ecosystem services. The quantity of news articles was related to patterns in Google search volume, whereas the number of research articles was not a good predictor but lagged behind Google search volume, indicating the role of news in the transfer of conservation science to the public.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.