ArticleInternational journal of environmental research and public health2022
Infodemiologists Beware: Recent Changes to the Google Health Trends API Result in Incomparable Data as of 1 January 2022.
Article in International journal of environmental research and public health, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Determining the Impact of the Reversal of Roe v. Wade on Birth Control and Infertility Trends Using Google Trends.Cureus · 2024Article
- Maximum generable interest: A universal standard for Google Trends search queries.Healthcare analytics (New York, N.Y.) · 2023Article
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PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In an ever-increasingly online world, many Internet users seek information from online search engines such as Google. Accessing such search activity allows infodemiologists a glimpse into the collective online mind. Tools such as Google Trends and Google Health Trends (GHT) can be used to gauge search activity in key geographical regions and for specific periods of time. Recently, Google implemented changes to the GHT platform. Evidence is provided here for an initial exploration of how this change impacted the data obtained from GHT. Comparing 177 weekly probabilities for short search sessions of 421 Freebase IDs in thirty geographies extracted from GHT both before and after the implemented change, a low correlation (median of all Spearman ρ = 0.262 [IQR 0.04; 0.53]) between these data was observed for the year 2022. In general, the extracted values are higher after the implemented changes, compared to the values extracted before the change. Future research using the GHT API should not attribute increases in GHT data from 1 January 2022 onward as being reflective of increased search activity for a specific keyword, but rather attribute it to the implemented change to the GHT sampling strategy.
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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.