Where and When Can We Use Google Trends to Measure Issue Salience?

2013 ◽  
Vol 46 (02) ◽  
pp. 280-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Mellon

Google search data have several major advantages over traditional survey data. First, the high costs of running frequent surveys mean that most survey questions are only asked occasionally making comparisons over time difficult. By contrast, Google Trends provides information on search trends measured weekly. Second, there are many countries where surveys are only conducted sporadically, whereas Google search data are available anywhere in the world where sufficient numbers of people use its search engine. The Google Trends website allows researchers to download data for almost all countries at no cost and to download time series of any search term's popularity over time (provided enough people have searched for it). For these reasons, Google Trends is an attractive data source for social scientists.

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-202
Author(s):  
Hanyoung Go ◽  
Myunghwa Kang ◽  
Yunwoo Nam

Purpose This paper aims to track how ecotourism has been presented in a digital world over time using geotagged photographs and internet search data. Ecotourism photographs and Google Trends search data are used to evaluate tourist perceptions of ecotourism by developing a categorization of essential attributes, examining the relation of ecotourism and sustainable development, and measuring the popularity of the ecotourism sites. Design/methodology/approach The researchers collected geotagged photographs from Flickr.com and downloaded Google search data from Google Trends. An integrative approach of content, trend and spatial analysis was applied to develop ecotourism categories and investigate tourist perceptions of ecotourism. First, the authors investigate ecotourism geotagged photographs on a social media to comprehend tourist perceptions of ecotourism by developing a categorization of key ecotourism attributes and measuring the popularity of the ecotourism sites. Second, they examined how ecotourism has been related with sustainable development using internet search data and investigate the trends in search data. Third, spatial analysis using GIS maps was used to visualize the spatial-temporal changes of photographs and tourist views throughout the world. Findings This study identified three primary themes of ecotourism perceptions and 13 categories of ecotourism attributes. Interest over time about ecotourism was mostly presented as its definitions in Google Trends. The result indicates that tracked ecotourism locations and tourist footprints are not congruent with the popular regions of ecotourism Google search. Originality/value This research follows the changing trends in ecotourism over a decade using geotagged photographs and internet search data. The evaluation of the global ecotourism trend provides important insights for global sustainable tourism development and actual tourist perception. Analyzing the trend of ecotourism is a strategic approach to assess the achievement of UN sustainable development goals. Factual perspectives and insights into how tourists are likely to seek and perceive natural attractions are valuable for a range of audiences, such as tourism industries and governments.


2001 ◽  
pp. 13-17
Author(s):  
Serhii Viktorovych Svystunov

In the 21st century, the world became a sign of globalization: global conflicts, global disasters, global economy, global Internet, etc. The Polish researcher Casimir Zhigulsky defines globalization as a kind of process, that is, the target set of characteristic changes that develop over time and occur in the modern world. These changes in general are reduced to mutual rapprochement, reduction of distances, the rapid appearance of a large number of different connections, contacts, exchanges, and to increase the dependence of society in almost all spheres of his life from what is happening in other, often very remote regions of the world.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 237802311876041 ◽  
Author(s):  
Volha Chykina ◽  
Charles Crabtree

Some populations are difficult to survey. This poses a problem for researchers who want to understand what issues matter to these populations and how the salience of those concerns varies over time. In this visualization article, the authors illustrate how Google Trends can be used to examine issue salience for hard-to-survey mass populations. Applying this method to immigrant concerns over deportation, the authors show that anxieties over removal increased in response to (potential) policy changes, such as Arizona’s Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act (Senate Bill 1070) and the immigration policies that were considered in the wake of Donald Trump’s election.


Author(s):  
Nicolò Cavalli

Using digital traces to investigate demographic behaviours, I leverage in this paper aggregated web search data to develop a Future Orientation Index for 200 countries and territories across the world. This index is expressed as the ratio of Google search volumes for ‘next year’ (e.g., 2021) to search volumes for ‘current year’ (e.g., 2020), adjusted for country-level internet penetration rates. I show that countries with lower levels of future orientation also have higher levels of fertility. Fertility rates decrease quickly as future orientation levels increase; but at the highest levels of future orientation, this correlation flattens out. Theoretically, I reconstruct the role that varying degrees of future orientation might play in fertility decisions by incorporating advances in behavioural economics into a traditional quantity-quality framework à la Becker.


2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (10) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Jesús Aragón-Ayala ◽  
Julissa Copa-Uscamayta ◽  
Luis Herrera ◽  
Frank Zela-Coila ◽  
Cender Udai Quispe-Juli

Infodemiology has been widely used to assess epidemics. In light of the recent pandemic, we use Google Search data to explore online interest about COVID-19 and related topics in 20 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. Data from Google Trends from December 12, 2019, to April 25, 2020, regarding COVID-19 and other related topics were retrieved and correlated with official data on COVID-19 cases and with national epidemiological indicators. The Latin American and Caribbean countries with the most interest for COVID-19 were Peru (100%) and Panama (98.39%). No correlation was found between this interest and national epidemiological indicators. The global and local response time were 20.2 ± 1.2 days and 16.7 ± 15 days, respectively. The duration of public attention was 64.8 ± 12.5 days. The most popular topics related to COVID-19 were: the country’s situation (100 ± 0) and coronavirus symptoms (36.82 ± 16.16). Most countries showed a strong or moderated (r = 0.72) significant correlation between searches related to COVID-19 and daily new cases. In addition, the highest significant lag correlation was found on day 13.35 ± 5.76 (r = 0.79). Interest shown by Latin American and Caribbean countries for COVID-19 was high. The degree of online interest in a country does not clearly reflect the magnitude of their epidemiological indicators. The response time and the lag correlation were greater than in European and Asian countries. Less interest was found for preventive measures. Strong correlation between searches for COVID-19 and daily new cases suggests a predictive utility.


2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S204-S205
Author(s):  
David Parizh ◽  
Maleeh Effendi ◽  
Thomas L Martin

Abstract Introduction Treating burns is a relatively common occurrence in American Emergency Departments occurring an estimated 486,000 times per year. In the digital era, patients feel increasingly empowered to seek out medical resources independently. The true number of people sustaining an injury and treating themselves at home or outside of the hospital setting is difficult to quantify. However, we can see when patients were searching for first-aid burn resources on the world’s most powerful and popular search engine - Google. We hypothesized that there would be a correlation between patient’s searching for burn care resources online and burn admissions. Methods We used Keywords Everywhere a browser add-on for Google Chrome to cross check various phrases and words that Americans might search for to find information on how to treat a burn. “Burn treatment” was found to be the most commonly searched phrase and this was verified using Google Trends. Google Trends dose not give raw search numbers. However, it expresses the search frequency for a term relative to how frequently that term was sought out during a specified time period. We pulled search data for each successive year back till 2006 the earliest year for which complete data was available. We were then able to overlay this data on a year to year basis and thus view when information about treating burns was the most sought out. Results A clear increase in the frequency of searches for burn treatment can be seen around the summer months, peaking in the week surrounding the 4th of July. Further data comparing this trend to burn admissions is forthcoming as data is being solicited. Conclusions Americans are searching for more resources regarding burn injuries in the summer months; and especially in the days surrounding the fourth of July. We are excited to correlate this data to burn admissions. If there is an inverse relationship between admissions during the summer months and number of inquiries made via Google for acute burn care, this may suggest that many of the burns are minor. Thus, being treated through our clinics or through third-party providers. Alternatively, the patients may be treating themselves using internet resources. If this proves to be the case, there may be an opportunity to enrich online resources for our patients. Applicability of Research to Practice Once the data processing is complete, there will be an indication if the number of people seeking out resources via Google Search Engine correlates with out burn admissions. If not, this may be an opportunity for improvement to enrich burn first-aid resources available online.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 874-875
Author(s):  
Ferizate Dika-Haxhirexha ◽  
Sevdije Koxha ◽  
Ledia Qatipi ◽  
Shqiponja Turkeshi ◽  
Aulona Haxhirexha

Covid-19 continues to spread at an unprecedented pace, sparing no country in the world and including almost all ages. Although at the beginning of the pandemic, it was thought that the virus did not affect children, however over time, in different countries, more and more cases of children with Covid-19 begun to appear, though rarely among them were recorded any victims.  However, the clinical picture of infections with this virus in children was much more challenging than in adults.  In this article, we will present the case of three children of ages 4 to 14 years, with signs of acute abdomen, respectively with acute abdominal pain, fever, vomiting, and in whom acute appendicitis was suspected. In all three patients, anamnestic data showed positive family members infected with covid-19.   All three children were sent to the surgery ward for follow-up and further treatment.  The laboratory analyzes in all of them resulted in increased values ​​of both erythrocyte sediment and CRP, while only in one of them the values ​​of LDH and transaminases (AST, ALT) were also increased.  Ultrasonographic examination of the abdomen in two children showed the presence of a small amount of free fluid in the abdomen and mesentery thickening with several packets of enlarged lymph nodes. Radiography of the lungs did not show pulmonary lesions in any of the children. Body temperature ranged from 37.2 to 38.50C, while urine was within the normal range.  All children were hospitalized and kept under observation for several consecutive days. At the same time, they were treated with antibiotics of the group of cephalosporins of the third generation, as well as with antipyretics (paracetamol). As their condition improved and the abdominal pain subsided completely, they were released from the hospital with instructions to continue the rest and taking vitamins at home in the form of ready-made preparations for children. Conclusion: While the Covid-19 pandemic is rapidly spreading and not sparing even children, pediatricians and surgeons must be very cautious in treating children with acute abdominal pain since infections with Covid-19, and not surgical diseases, might be the real cause of these concerns.   


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mekenna Brown ◽  
Christopher Cain ◽  
James Whitfield ◽  
Edwin Ding ◽  
Sara Y Del Valle ◽  
...  

AbstractPublic health agencies generally have a small window to respond to burgeoning disease outbreaks in order to mitigate the potential impact. There has been significant interest in developing forecasting models that can predict how and where a disease will spread. However, since clinical surveillance systems typically publish data with a lag of two or more weeks, there is a need for complimentary data streams that can close this gap. We examined the usefulness of Google Trends search data for analyzing the 2016 Zika epidemic in Colombia and evaluating their ability to predict its spread. We calculated the correlation and the time delay between the reported case data and the Google Trends data using variations of the logistic growth model, and showed that the data sets were systematically offset from each other, implying a lead time in the Google Trends data. Our study showed how Internet data can potentially complement clinical surveillance data and may be used as an effective early detection tool for disease outbreaks.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Behailu Terefe ◽  
Alessandro Rovetta ◽  
Asha K Rajan ◽  
Mengist Awoke

Abstract Background: During outbreaks, like novel coronavirus (COVID 19) disease pandemic, social communication and behaviors are very important. Under such circumstances, individual activities in social media and other online platforms will increase tremendously resulting in the circulation of information in the community. These pieces of information can be infodemic monikers misleading the community. Thus exploring the trends of public interest in searching COVID 19 related issues and checking information circulating in the public is highly crucial. Objective: This study aimed to explore users' concerns towards coronavirus related online web search and to investigate the extent of infodemic monikers (misinformation) adopted for identifying the virus in the early stage of COVID 19 spread in Ethiopia. Methods: Google Trends was employed in exploring the tendency towards coronavirus related web search activities in Ethiopia from March 13 to May 8, 2020. Keywords of the different names of COVID 19 and health related issues were used to investigate the trends of public interest in searching from Google over time. Relative search volume (RSV), Average peak comparison (APC), and associated graphs were used to compare the trends of online search interests. Pearson correlation coefficient was calculated to check for the presence of correlation. Result: During the study period, the top names users adopted to identify the virus in Ethiopia were corona, virus, coronavirus, corona virus, China coronavirus, and COVID 19. In almost all search activities, the users employed infodemic monikers to identify the virus (overall relative search percentage of 99%). Updates related issues (APC=60, 95% CI, 55, 66) were the most commonly trending health related searches on Google followed by mortality (APC=27, 95% CI, 24, 30) and symptoms (APC=55, 95% CI, 50, 60) related issues. The regional comparison showed the highest cumulative peak for the Oromia region (cumulative total RSVs, 536) followed by the Tigray region (cumulative total RSVs, 512) on querying health related information from Google. No significant correlation was detected between COVID 19 cases per region/city and the maximum peaks of health related searches. Conclusion: This study revealed an initial increase in the public interest of COVID 19 related Google search, but this interest was declined over time. Tremendous circulation of infodemic monikers for the identification of the virus was also noticed in the country. The authors recommend for the government and other stakeholders to work immensely to keep the people alert on coronavirus-related issues and to promote the official names of the virus, like COVID 19, SARS CoV 2 in the public to decrease the circulation of misleading and misinformation amid the outbreak. Keywords: Coronavirus, infodemiology, infodemic monikers; Google Trends, Ethiopia


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