01 May 2009 | Author: L. Sutherland Head of Media Content

Google extends Flu Tracking to Mexico

As the swine flu virus, and the fear surrounding it, continues to spread, internet giant Google has created a tailor made version of its Flu Trends service for Mexico.

According to the New York Times, Google hopes that the extended service will help health officials and interested parties track the spread of swine flu in Mexico.

The service - which is designed to footprint the incidences of flu based on searches for related keywords - differs in one major respect to the version of Google Flu Trends released in the US in November of last year: it doesn't have the same level of historical surveillance data to ensure that the search data it relies on correlates. This fact has led the Mountain View colossus to label Flu Trends for Mexico "experimental".

However, the experimental service came into being at the behest of the scientists at the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in America and it is hoped that the model will prove useful going forward.

The official Google blog also claims that the service has been created with the intention that it will aim to ensure that it can recognise the difference between search queries born from panic or curiosity rather than necessity. The post said: "Given the tremendous recent attention to swine flu, our model tries to filter out search queries that are more likely associated with topical searches rather than searches by those who may be experiencing symptoms."

While some doubt has been expressed as to whether Google's Flu Trends feature can be relied upon to create advance warnings or reliable data, the digital doyenne attests that the patterns it observes could prove meaningful across large populations of searchers. At best, if Google can at least semi-accurately identify which searches come from genuine sufferers rather than broadly concerned individuals, it has the potential to be instrumental in the quest to minimise the spread of the virus. At worst, it's capable of inciting unnecessary concern.

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