Google puts flu tracker to work on swine flu

Using a new tracking tool, search engine giant Google said it saw a spike in searches for information about flu among people in Mexico last week even before news of the outbreak became widely known.

Google said it has put together a flu trends tracking system for Mexico based on the US Google Flu tool launched last fall that is used by US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention to figure out where influenza is heating up.

It is based on Google's observation that people who are sick with flu tend to search for the same types of information on the internet, and these searches can be used to predict where an outbreak may be occurring.

"We have seen evidence in Mexico that Google users also search flu-related topics when they are experiencing flu-related symptoms," Jeremy Ginsberg, lead engineer for Flu Trends at Google, said in a telephone briefing.

Studies show that between 35 and 40 per cent of all visits to the internet are started by people looking for health information.