ArticleJournal of epidemiology and global health2017
Is Google Trends a reliable tool for digital epidemiology? Insights from different clinical settings.
Article in Journal of epidemiology and global health, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 130 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
130 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Association between public attention and monkeypox epidemic: A global lag-correlation analysis.Journal of medical virology · 2023Pooled it
- Multisource Early Warning Framework Integrating Regional Pathogen Surveillance and Baidu Index Data for Respiratory Infectious Disease Prediction in Beijing: Retrospective Time-Series Modeling Study.JMIR formative research · 2026Article
- Article
- Evaluation of interest trends among the general population and scientific community in migraine surgery.JPRAS open · 2026Article
- Changes in Internet Search Term Popularity in Elder Mistreatment (2018-2023): Infodemiology Study of Google Trends Data.JMIR formative research · 2026Article
- Effects of the pandemic and economic crisis on public search trends related to oral and maxillofacial surgery in Türkiye: a Google Trends time-series analysis (2020-2025).BMC oral health · 2026Observational
- Intimate partner violence Google searches before and after the Dobbs decision.American journal of epidemiology · 2026Article
- Early prediction of the outbreak risk of dengue fever in Ba Ria-Vung Tau province, Vietnam: An analysis based on Google trends and statistical models.Infectious Disease Modelling · 2025Article
- Google search interests and new cases of COVID-19 in Bangladesh: a vector autoregression analysis for disease surveillance.BMC research notes · 2025Article
- Public Interest in Achilles Tendon Ruptures: A 10-Year Google Trends Analysis.Foot & ankle orthopaedics · 2025Article
- Mapping the landscape of mental health research through Google Trends: Bibliometric and thematic insights.PCN reports : psychiatry and clinical neurosciences · 2025Article
- Google Trends for the Human Papillomavirus Vaccine in India From 2010 to 2024: Infodemiological Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Article
- Public interest in drug-related problems reflected in information search trends: an infodemiological study.Daru : journal of Faculty of Pharmacy, Tehran University of Medical Sciences · 2024Article
- Identifying sarcoidosis trends using web search and real-world data in Sweden: a retrospective longitudinal study.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Assessing the Effect of Infant Peanut Exposure Guidelines on Peanut Aspiration Using Google Trends Search Analysis.Cureus · 2024Article
- Emerging Trends in Information-Seeking Behavior for Alpha-Gal Syndrome: Infodemiology Study Using Time Series and Content Analysis.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Article
- Inferring skin-brain-skin connections from infodemiology data using dynamic Bayesian networks.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Google Trends Analysis of Otologic Symptom Searches Following COVID-19.Iranian journal of otorhinolaryngology · 2024Article
- Public interest trends for COVID-19 and pandemic trajectory: A time-series analysis of US state-level data.PLOS digital health · 2024Article
- The Interest in Betting, Smoking, Alcohol, and Drugs in Malawi: Changing Trends between 2012-2022.Malawi medical journal : the journal of Medical Association of Malawi · 2024Article
70 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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3 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Internet-derived information has been recently recognized as a valuable tool for epidemiological investigation. Google Trends, a Google Inc. portal, generates data on geographical and temporal patterns according to specified keywords. The aim of this study was to compare the reliability of Google Trends in different clinical settings, for both common diseases with lower media coverage, and for less common diseases attracting major media coverage. We carried out a search in Google Trends using the keywords "renal colic", "epistaxis", and "mushroom poisoning", selected on the basis of available and reliable epidemiological data. Besides this search, we carried out a second search for three clinical conditions (i.e., "meningitis", "Legionella Pneumophila pneumonia", and "Ebola fever"), which recently received major focus by the Italian media. In our analysis, no correlation was found between data captured from Google Trends and epidemiology of renal colics, epistaxis and mushroom poisoning. Only when searching for the term "mushroom" alone the Google Trends search generated a seasonal pattern which almost overlaps with the epidemiological profile, but this was probably mostly due to searches for harvesting and cooking rather than to for poisoning. The Google Trends data also failed to reflect the geographical and temporary patterns of disease for meningitis, Legionella Pneumophila pneumonia and Ebola fever. The results of our study confirm that Google Trends has modest reliability for defining the epidemiology of relatively common diseases with minor media coverage, or relatively rare diseases with higher audience. Overall, Google Trends seems to be more influenced by the media clamor than by true epidemiological burden.
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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.