“Last week, at the request of the Centers for Disease Control, Google took a retroactive look at its search data from Mexico. And there the team found a pre-media bump in telltale flu-related search terms (you know, “influenza + phlegm + coughing”) that was inconsistent with standard, seasonal flu trends.
“We did see a small increase in many parts of Mexico before major news coverage began last week,” said Jeremy Ginsberg, lead engineer for Google.org’s Flu Trends.” - Via Wired.com
Google Flu Trends may have caught the Mexico Flu outbreak earlier if it had been tracking Google search terms originating in Mexico.
Google has now created Experimental Flu Trends for Mexico.
Wed, Apr 29, 2009
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