Google Flu Trends Tracker, Depression and Others Could Be Next

The new Google Flu Trends is making big news today, as the search engine has launched an online tracking system that examines google search terms to identify areas where the flu has struck.  The software allows the Centre for Disease Control, and anyone else who is interested, to both analyze and predict influenza outbreaks across America.

But the launch of this innovative new software, which is similiar to the online Diabetes tracker implemented in Australia just a day previous, has other far-reaching implications beyond benefitting medical developments.

Every time we enter a search term, we are essentially leaving an anonymous fingerprint that leaves clues to be deciphered.  And people have been taking note of these snippets of information for years.

In his book Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why It Matters, author Bill Tancer identifies some monumental changes that have occurred since people turned to the internet for all their answers.  He notes that when prom dresses became a big search term in January, it initially didn't make much sense - until analysts and businesses realized that teenaged girls were preparing for the big prom day months in advance, vying to secure that perfect dress.  Magazines such as Seventeen and TeenVogue responded by altering their editorial calendars to align with the search trend, and now run their big prom issues in December to capitalize on the traffic.

Looking at depression unearthed another big find - according to psychologists, people become the most depressed in the 3rd week of January due to failed New Year's resolutions, the gloomy weather, holiday bills and other post-seasonal woes.  But Google trends indicates something quite different: search engines show that "depression" pops up as a keyword most often around US Thanksgiving, indicating that people actually become depressed months before they finally decide to report their feelings to a medical professional.

The potential for extracting information from search terms and trends seems infinite; an October article on TechCrunch muses that blogs and mainstream media sites are using Google Trends to monitor hot key search terms in order to incorporate those terms into their own web content and capitalize on the increased traffic.  This can happen on a daily, even hourly basis if you have a large enough team to stay on top of the aggregated search terms.  In a sense, this is creating news stories out of interests, rather than creating interest out of news stories.  The technology to spread buzz and gossip is becoming so fast that it is essentially preceding and defining news itself - or at least, our antiquated and pre-concieved notions of mainstream news media.

There is a wealth of information that an be extracted from trending topics on search engines like Google - many of which are infinitely useful, such as the Google Flu Trends - but others may craft "news stories" or blog topics out of popular search trends, a practice which is somewhat questionable.  Does access to Google trends require moderation, are we inching closer to abusing this information or is it all for the greater good in understanding the ever-shifting landscape of our lives?