Mental Health Interest and Its Prediction during the COVID-19 Pandemic Using Google Trends

This study aimed to analyze and predict interest in mental health-related queries created in Google Trends (GT) during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Google Trends tool collected data on the Google search engine interest and provided real-time surveillance. Five key phrases: “depression”, “insomnia”, ”loneliness”, “psychologist”, and “psychiatrist”, were studied for the period from 25 September 2016 to 19 September 2021. The predictions for the upcoming trend were carried out for the period from September 2021 to September 2023 and were estimated by a hybrid five-component model. The results show a decrease of interest in the search queries “depression” and “loneliness” by 15.3% and 7.2%, respectively. Compared to the period under review, an increase of 5.2% in “insomnia” expression and 8.4% in the “psychiatrist” phrase were predicted. The expression “psychologist” is expected to show an almost unchanged interest. The upcoming changes in the expressions connected with mental health might be explained by vaccination and the gradual removal of social distancing rules. Finally, the analysis of GT can provide a timely insight into the mental health interest of a population and give a forecast for a short period trend.

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Google, Tell Me. Is He Gay? Masculinity, Heterosexuality, and Gendered Anxieties in Google Search Queries about Sexuality

Sociological Perspectives ◽

10.1177/07311214211001906 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 073112142110019

Author(s):

Emma Mishel ◽

Tristan Bridges ◽

Mónica L. Caudillo

Keyword(s):

Social Desirability ◽

Google Trends ◽

Social Desirability Bias ◽

Same Sex ◽

Search Queries ◽

Sexual Identities ◽

Google Search

It is difficult to gauge people’s acceptance about same-sex sexualities, as responses to questionnaires are prone to social desirability bias. We offer a new proxy for understanding popular concern surrounding same-sex sexualities: prevalence of Google searches demonstrating concern over gay/lesbian sexual identities. Using Google Trends data, we find that Google searches about whether a specific person is gay or lesbian show patterned bias toward masculine searches, in that such searches are much more frequently conducted about boys and men compared with girls and women. We put these findings into context by comparing search frequencies with other popular Google searches about sexuality and otherwise. We put forth that the patterned bias toward masculine searches illustrates support for the enduring relationship between masculinity and heterosexuality and that it does so on a larger scale than previous research has been able to establish.

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The study protocol: Neuroendocrinology and (epi-) genetics of female reproductive transition phase mood disorder - an observational, longitudinal study from pregnancy to postpartum

BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth ◽

10.1186/s12884-020-03280-5 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 20 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Alexandra Johann ◽

Ulrike Ehlert

Keyword(s):

Mental Health ◽

Health Care ◽

Longitudinal Study ◽

Postpartum Depression ◽

Family System ◽

Risk And Resilience ◽

Pregnancy And Postpartum ◽

Health Related ◽

Resilience Factors ◽

Insight Into

Abstract Background Postpartum depression is considered to be one of the most common health threats during pregnancy and postpartum, affecting not only the woman herself but also the offspring and the whole family system. Evidence for a conclusive etiopathological model with distinct risk and resilience factors is still broadly lacking. Therefore, the aim of the present study is to investigate numerous health-related markers to obtain greater insight into which biopsychosocial profiles render women more vulnerable to PPD or facilitate a healthy transition from pregnancy to postpartum. Methods The observational, longitudinal study aims to include a total of 288 physically healthy women, aged 20–45 years. A multitude of relevant parameters, of an (epi-) genetic, endocrinological, physiological and psychological nature, will be assessed over a period of 5 months, following the participants from the 3rd trimester until three months postpartum. Discussion The ultimate goal of the present study is to ameliorate mental health care during pregnancy and postpartum, by gaining a better understanding of the underlying biopsychosocial mechanisms that women undergo during the transition from pregnancy to postpartum.

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743 Keeping up with Dr. Google: When Are Patients Seeking First-aid Burn Resources?

Journal of Burn Care & Research ◽

10.1093/jbcr/iraa024.325 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 41 (Supplement_1) ◽

pp. S204-S205

Author(s):

David Parizh ◽

Maleeh Effendi ◽

Thomas L Martin

Keyword(s):

Search Engine ◽

Hospital Setting ◽

First Aid ◽

Third Party ◽

Google Trends ◽

Burn Treatment ◽

Burn Care ◽

Search Data ◽

Search Numbers ◽

Google Search

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.

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Public Health Implications of Google Searches for Sunscreen, Sunburn, Skin Cancer, and Melanoma in the United States

American Journal of Health Promotion ◽

10.1177/0890117118811754 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 33 (4) ◽

pp. 611-615 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Zachary H. Hopkins ◽

Aaron M. Secrest

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

United States ◽

Skin Cancer ◽

Search Engine ◽

State Level ◽

The United States ◽

Google Trends ◽

Search Term ◽

Melanoma Incidence ◽

Google Search

Purpose: Google Trends (GT) offers insights into public interests and behaviors and holds potential for guiding public health campaigns. We evaluated trends in US searches for sunscreen, sunburn, skin cancer, and melanoma and their relationships with melanoma outcomes. Design: Google Trends was queried for US search volumes from 2004 to 2017. Time-matched search term data were correlated with melanoma outcomes data from Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results Program and United States Cancer Statistics databases (2004-2014 and 2010-2014, respectively). Setting: Users of the Google search engine in the United States. Participants: Google search engine users in the United States. This represents approximately 65% of the population. Measures: Search volumes, melanoma outcomes. Analysis: Pearson correlations between search term volumes, time, and national melanoma outcomes. Spearman correlations between state-level search data and melanoma outcomes. Results: The terms “sunscreen,” “sunburn,” “skin cancer,” and “melanoma” were all highly correlated ( P < .001), with sunscreen and sunburn having the greatest correlation ( r = 0.95). Sunscreen/sunburn searches have increased over time, but skin cancer/melanoma searches have decreased ( P < .05). Nationally, sunscreen, sunburn, and skin cancer were significantly correlated with melanoma incidence. At the state level, only sunscreen and melanoma searches were significantly correlated with melanoma incidence. Conclusions: We conclude that online skin cancer prevention campaigns should focus on the search terms “sunburn” and “sunscreen,” given the decreasing online searches for skin cancer and melanoma. This is reinforced by the finding that sunscreen searches are higher in areas with higher melanoma incidence.

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Using Application Programming Interfaces to Access Google Data for Health Research: Protocol for a Methodological Framework (Preprint)

10.2196/preprints.16543 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Anne Zepecki ◽

Sylvia Guendelman ◽

John DeNero ◽

Ndola Prata

Keyword(s):

Real Time ◽

Birth Control ◽

Google Trends ◽

Search Term ◽

Health Trends ◽

Search Queries ◽

Search Volume ◽

Application Programming ◽

Relative Search Volume ◽

Google Search

BACKGROUND Individuals are increasingly turning to search engines like Google to obtain health information and access resources. Analysis of Google search queries offers a novel approach, which is part of the methodological toolkit for infodemiology or infoveillance researchers, to understanding population health concerns and needs in real time or near-real time. While searches predominantly have been examined with the Google Trends website tool, newer application programming interfaces (APIs) are now available to academics to draw a richer landscape of searches. These APIs allow users to write code in languages like Python to retrieve sample data directly from Google servers. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this paper is to describe a novel protocol to determine the top queries, volume of queries, and the top sites reached by a population searching on the web for a specific health term. The protocol retrieves Google search data obtained from three Google APIs: Google Trends, Google Health Trends (also referred to as Flu Trends), and Google Custom Search. METHODS Our protocol consisted of four steps: (1) developing a master list of top search queries for an initial search term using Google Trends, (2) gathering information on relative search volume using Google Health Trends, (3) determining the most popular sites using Google Custom Search, and (4) calculating estimated total search volume. We tested the protocol following key procedures at each step and verified its usefulness by examining search traffic on birth control in 2017 in the United States. Two separate programmers working independently achieved similar results with insignificant variation due to sample variability. RESULTS We successfully tested the methodology on the initial search term birth control. We identified top search queries for birth control, of which birth control pill was the most popular and obtained the relative and estimated total search volume for the top queries: relative search volume was 0.54 for the pill, corresponding to an estimated 9.3-10.7 million searches. We used the estimates of the proportion of search activity for the top queries to arrive at a generated list of the most popular websites: for the pill, the Planned Parenthood website was the top site. CONCLUSIONS The proposed methodological framework demonstrates how to retrieve Google query data from multiple Google APIs and provides thorough documentation required to systematically identify search queries and websites, as well as estimate relative and total search volume of queries in real time or near-real time in specific locations and time periods. Although the protocol needs further testing, it allows researchers to replicate the steps and shows promise in advancing our understanding of population-level health concerns. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT RR1-10.2196/16543

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The Causality Inference of Public Interest in Restaurants and Bars on Daily COVID-19 Cases in the United States: Google Trends Analysis

JMIR Public Health and Surveillance ◽

10.2196/22880 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 7 (4) ◽

pp. e22880

Author(s):

Milad Asgari Mehrabadi ◽

Nikil Dutt ◽

Amir M Rahmani

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Granger Causality ◽

Public Interest ◽

Granger Causality Test ◽

The United States ◽

Google Trends ◽

Causality Test ◽

Us States ◽

Search Queries ◽

Google Search

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has affected virtually every region in the world. At the time of this study, the number of daily new cases in the United States was greater than that in any other country, and the trend was increasing in most states. Google Trends provides data regarding public interest in various topics during different periods. Analyzing these trends using data mining methods may provide useful insights and observations regarding the COVID-19 outbreak. Objective The objective of this study is to consider the predictive ability of different search terms not directly related to COVID-19 with regard to the increase of daily cases in the United States. In particular, we are concerned with searches related to dine-in restaurants and bars. Data were obtained from the Google Trends application programming interface and the COVID-19 Tracking Project. Methods To test the causation of one time series on another, we used the Granger causality test. We considered the causation of two different search query trends related to dine-in restaurants and bars on daily positive cases in the US states and territories with the 10 highest and 10 lowest numbers of daily new cases of COVID-19. In addition, we used Pearson correlations to measure the linear relationships between different trends. Results Our results showed that for states and territories with higher numbers of daily cases, the historical trends in search queries related to bars and restaurants, which mainly occurred after reopening, significantly affected the number of daily new cases on average. California, for example, showed the most searches for restaurants on June 7, 2020; this affected the number of new cases within two weeks after the peak, with a P value of .004 for the Granger causality test. Conclusions Although a limited number of search queries were considered, Google search trends for restaurants and bars showed a significant effect on daily new cases in US states and territories with higher numbers of daily new cases. We showed that these influential search trends can be used to provide additional information for prediction tasks regarding new cases in each region. These predictions can help health care leaders manage and control the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on society and prepare for its outcomes.

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As lost as a pun in a corpus: an investigation into noncanonical phraseological occurrences in large corpora and translation

Tradterm ◽

10.11606/issn.2317-9511.v37p460-487 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 37 (2) ◽

pp. 460-487

Author(s):

Adauri Brezolin

Keyword(s):

Search Engine ◽

Corpus Linguistics ◽

Canonical Forms ◽

Search Queries ◽

Data Source ◽

Fixed Expressions ◽

Google Search ◽

The Web

Although it might appear contradictory to investigate noncanonical phraseological combinations in corpora, corpus linguistics research has revealed that they exceed canonical forms in number (Philip 2008). This paper intends to discuss the idea of fixedness by analyzing variant forms of idioms, and if they qualify as wordplay. The Web, our data source, is employed for collecting such noncanonical occurrences in both English and Portuguese using keywords on the Google Search Engine. Our discussion mainly draws on studies relating to fixed phrases (Kjellmer 1991; Granger & Paquot 2008; Tagnin 2013); phraseological skeletons (Renouf & Sinclair 1991; Philip 2008), and idiom transformations (Veisbergs 1997; Barta 2005). Due attention is also given to search queries of nonstandard forms of fixed expressions in corpora (Philip 2008), and the translation of idiom-based wordplay (Veisbergs 1997; Brezolin 2020)

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Coronavirus-related online web search desire amidst the rising novel coronavirus incidence in Ethiopia: Google Trends-based infodemiology

10.1101/2020.07.23.20158592 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Behailu Terefe ◽

Alessandro Rovetta ◽

Asha K Rajan ◽

Mengist Awoke

Keyword(s):

Public Interest ◽

Web Search ◽

Google Trends ◽

The Public ◽

Corona Virus ◽

Health Related ◽

Novel Coronavirus ◽

Google Search ◽

Over Time ◽

Online Web

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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The self-Googling phenomenon: Investigating the performance of personalized information resources

First Monday ◽

10.5210/fm.v14i12.2683 ◽

2009 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Thomas Nicolai ◽

Lars Kirchhof ◽

Axel Bruns ◽

Jason Wilson ◽

Barry Saunders

Keyword(s):

Search Engine ◽

Search Engines ◽

Information Resources ◽

The Self ◽

Web Pages ◽

Online Experiment ◽

Search Queries ◽

Quantitative Studies ◽

Significant Difference ◽

Google Search

This paper investigates self-Googling through the monitoring of search engine activities of users and adds to the few quantitative studies on this topic already in existence. We explore this phenomenon by answering the following questions: To what extent is the self-Googling visible in the usage of search engines; is any significant difference measurable between queries related to self-Googling and generic search queries; to what extent do self-Googling search requests match the selected personalised Web pages? To address these questions we explore the theory of narcissism in order to help define self-Googling and present the results from a 14-month online experiment using Google search engine usage data.

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Google and Women’s Health-Related Issues: What Does the Search Engine Data Reveal?

Online Journal of Public Health Informatics ◽

10.5210/ojphi.v6i2.5470 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 6 (2) ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Haim Arie Abenhaim ◽

Mazin Baazeem

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Ovarian Cancer ◽

Women’S Health ◽

Women's Health ◽

Search Engine ◽

Daily Practice ◽

The United States ◽

Search Volume ◽

Health Related ◽

Google Search

Objectives: Identifying the gaps in public knowledge of women’s health related issues has always been difficult. With the increasing number of Internet users in the United States, we sought to use the Internet as a tool to help us identify such gaps and to estimate women’s most prevalent health concerns by examining commonly searched health-related keywords in Google search engine. Methods: We collected a large pool of possible search keywords from two independent practicing obstetrician/gynecologists and classified them into five main categories (obstetrics, gynecology, infertility, urogynecology/menopause and oncology), and measured the monthly average search volume within the United States for each keyword with all its possible combinations using Google AdWords tool. Results: We found that pregnancy related keywords were less frequently searched in general compared to other categories with an average of 145,400 hits per month for the top twenty keywords. Among the most common pregnancy-related keywords was “pregnancy and sex’ while pregnancy-related diseases were uncommonly searched. HPV alone was searched 305,400 times per month. Of the cancers affecting women, breast cancer was the most commonly searched with an average of 247,190 times per month, followed by cervical cancer then ovarian cancer. Conclusion: The commonly searched keywords are often issues that are not discussed in our daily practice as well as in public health messages. The search volume is relatively related to disease prevalence with the exception of ovarian cancer which could signify a public fear.

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