IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0018687.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Monitoring Influenza Activity in the United States: A Comparison of Traditional Surveillance Systems with Google Flu Trends

Author

Listed:
  • Justin R Ortiz
  • Hong Zhou
  • David K Shay
  • Kathleen M Neuzil
  • Ashley L Fowlkes
  • Christopher H Goss

Abstract

Background: Google Flu Trends was developed to estimate US influenza-like illness (ILI) rates from internet searches; however ILI does not necessarily correlate with actual influenza virus infections. Methods and Findings: Influenza activity data from 2003–04 through 2007–08 were obtained from three US surveillance systems: Google Flu Trends, CDC Outpatient ILI Surveillance Network (CDC ILI Surveillance), and US Influenza Virologic Surveillance System (CDC Virus Surveillance). Pearson's correlation coefficients with 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) were calculated to compare surveillance data. An analysis was performed to investigate outlier observations and determine the extent to which they affected the correlations between surveillance data. Pearson's correlation coefficient describing Google Flu Trends and CDC Virus Surveillance over the study period was 0.72 (95% CI: 0.64, 0.79). The correlation between CDC ILI Surveillance and CDC Virus Surveillance over the same period was 0.85 (95% CI: 0.81, 0.89). Most of the outlier observations in both comparisons were from the 2003–04 influenza season. Exclusion of the outlier observations did not substantially improve the correlation between Google Flu Trends and CDC Virus Surveillance (0.82; 95% CI: 0.76, 0.87) or CDC ILI Surveillance and CDC Virus Surveillance (0.86; 95%CI: 0.82, 0.90). Conclusions: This analysis demonstrates that while Google Flu Trends is highly correlated with rates of ILI, it has a lower correlation with surveillance for laboratory-confirmed influenza. Most of the outlier observations occurred during the 2003–04 influenza season that was characterized by early and intense influenza activity, which potentially altered health care seeking behavior, physician testing practices, and internet search behavior.

Suggested Citation

  • Justin R Ortiz & Hong Zhou & David K Shay & Kathleen M Neuzil & Ashley L Fowlkes & Christopher H Goss, 2011. "Monitoring Influenza Activity in the United States: A Comparison of Traditional Surveillance Systems with Google Flu Trends," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(4), pages 1-9, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0018687
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0018687
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0018687
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0018687&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0018687?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Simonsen, L. & Clarke, M.J. & Williamson, G.D. & Stroup, D.F. & Arden, N.H. & Schonberger, L.B., 1997. "The impact of influenza epidemics on mortality: Introducing a severity index," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 87(12), pages 1944-1950.
    2. Jeremy Ginsberg & Matthew H. Mohebbi & Rajan S. Patel & Lynnette Brammer & Mark S. Smolinski & Larry Brilliant, 2009. "Detecting influenza epidemics using search engine query data," Nature, Nature, vol. 457(7232), pages 1012-1014, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pawel Sobkowicz, 2016. "Quantitative Agent Based Model of Opinion Dynamics: Polish Elections of 2015," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(5), pages 1-32, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Xiaoli Wang & Shuangsheng Wu & C Raina MacIntyre & Hongbin Zhang & Weixian Shi & Xiaomin Peng & Wei Duan & Peng Yang & Yi Zhang & Quanyi Wang, 2015. "Using an Adjusted Serfling Regression Model to Improve the Early Warning at the Arrival of Peak Timing of Influenza in Beijing," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(3), pages 1-14, March.
    2. Rebuli, Nicolas P. & Bean, N.G. & Ross, J.V., 2018. "Estimating the basic reproductive number during the early stages of an emerging epidemic," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 26-36.
    3. David H Chae & Sean Clouston & Mark L Hatzenbuehler & Michael R Kramer & Hannah L F Cooper & Sacoby M Wilson & Seth I Stephens-Davidowitz & Robert S Gold & Bruce G Link, 2015. "Association between an Internet-Based Measure of Area Racism and Black Mortality," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(4), pages 1-12, April.
    4. Ishani Chaudhuri & Parthajit Kayal, 2022. "Predicting Power of Ticker Search Volume in Indian Stock Market," Working Papers 2022-214, Madras School of Economics,Chennai,India.
    5. Yang, Xin & Pan, Bing & Evans, James A. & Lv, Benfu, 2015. "Forecasting Chinese tourist volume with search engine data," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 386-397.
    6. Arthi, Vellore & Parman, John, 2021. "Disease, downturns, and wellbeing: Economic history and the long-run impacts of COVID-19," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    7. Kuchler, Theresa & Russel, Dominic & Stroebel, Johannes, 2022. "JUE Insight: The geographic spread of COVID-19 correlates with the structure of social networks as measured by Facebook," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    8. Markowitz, Sara & Nesson, Erik & Robinson, Joshua J., 2019. "The effects of employment on influenza rates," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 286-295.
    9. Bentzen, Jeanet Sinding, 2021. "In crisis, we pray: Religiosity and the COVID-19 pandemic," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 192(C), pages 541-583.
    10. Jesse T. Richman & Ryan J. Roberts, 2023. "Assessing Spurious Correlations in Big Search Data," Forecasting, MDPI, vol. 5(1), pages 1-12, February.
    11. Linus Schiöler & Marianne Fris�n, 2012. "Multivariate outbreak detection," Journal of Applied Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(2), pages 223-242, April.
    12. Sasikiran Kandula & Jeffrey Shaman, 2019. "Reappraising the utility of Google Flu Trends," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(8), pages 1-16, August.
    13. Daniel E. O'Leary, 2024. "Toward an extended framework of exhaust data for predictive analytics: An empirical approach," Intelligent Systems in Accounting, Finance and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(2), June.
    14. Grechyna, Daryna, 2025. "Raising awareness of climate change: Nature, activists, politicians?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 227(C).
    15. Yangkun Huang & Xiaoping Xu & Sini Su, 2021. "Diverging from News Media: An Exploratory Study on the Changing Dynamics between Media and Public Attention on Cancer in China from 2011–2020," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(16), pages 1-13, August.
    16. Vosen, Simeon & Schmidt, Torsten, 2012. "A monthly consumption indicator for Germany based on Internet search query data," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 19(7), pages 683-687.
    17. Klaus Ackermann & Simon D Angus & Paul A Raschky, 2017. "The Internet as Quantitative Social Science Platform: Insights from a Trillion Observations," Papers 1701.05632, arXiv.org.
    18. Edward L. Glaeser & Scott Duke Kominers & Michael Luca & Nikhil Naik, 2018. "Big Data And Big Cities: The Promises And Limitations Of Improved Measures Of Urban Life," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 56(1), pages 114-137, January.
    19. Sean Coogan & Zhixian Sui & David Raubenheimer, 2018. "Gluttony and guilt: monthly trends in internet search query data are comparable with national-level energy intake and dieting behavior," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 4(1), pages 1-9, December.
    20. Tobias Preis & Federico Botta & Helen Susannah Moat, 2020. "Sensing global tourism numbers with millions of publicly shared online photographs," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 52(3), pages 471-477, May.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0018687. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.