Where Are STDs Rampant? Google Wants To Help Researchers Find Out

With sexually transmitted diseases on the rise, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago think they might have a powerful new weapon to fight their spread: Google searches. Search trends can be broken down by city and state, weighted according to their significance and combined with other data sources to give a snapshot of where disease is spreading well before public health agencies report the number of verified cases.

Researchers can mine Google data to identify searched phrases that spiked during previous upticks in a particular disease. Then, they measure the frequency of those searches in real time to estimate the number of emerging cases. For instance, a jump in gonorrhea might coincide with more people searching “painful urination” or other symptoms. Search trends can be broken down by city and state, weighted according to their significance and combined with other data sources to give a snapshot of where disease is spreading well before public health agencies report the number of verified cases...