News: Google gets the flu

Google has announced the launch of Google Flu Trends for New Zealand, which the search engine claims may provide early detection of flu outbreaks.

Launched in the US last year, it resulted from Google realizing that certain flu-related search queries are common during flu season (It wouldn’t take a brain surgeon to figure that one out, one would think – Ed) and that searches for flu-related topics are closely correlated to the actual spread of flu.

For the New Zealand version, Google worked with data from the WHO National Influenza Centre at the Institute of Environmental Science and Research (ESR), to build a flu model for NZ, broken up into the North and South Island.

By tallying the results, the search engine can estimate how many people have the flu, or flu-like illnesses. And because the results are tabulated immediately, Google believes that Google Flu Trends may provide early detection of flu outbreaks.

See it here: www.google.org/flutrends/