Google sits on top of a gold mine of information. They can essentially tap into our minds whenever we go online to learn something. They can see what we’re thinking. For example, check out their list of hot trends, which shows the top 100 fastest-rising search terms as of right now. For today, #24 is “is there mail on veterans day” and #53 is “is the post office open on veterans day.” Another example is Google Trends, where you can explore the search volume for any term you choose. (Check out foreclosure.) Not only can Google tell what people are searching for, they can also identify roughly where the searches are coming, so these trends can be explored on a regional level.

All this is interesting, but there’s more useful data in there waiting to be uncovered. Someone at Google put together a list of search terms that might be entered by someone with the flu, extracted a few years of search data, correlated that with the CDC’s disease data, and created Google Flu Trends. The idea is that when flu season hits and people start getting sick, they’ll start hunting for information and advice online. This will get noticed by Google and can provide useful data on where the flu seems to be hitting hardest. Additionally, since most people are likely to go online before they call their doctor or go to the hospital, trends might become apparent earlier through search data than through more traditional methods.

[caption id=”attachment_70” align=”alignnone” width=”500” caption=”Graph of search data from Google Flu Trends”][/caption]

All in all, it’s a very clever way to take information which otherwise might get ignored, or used for a purely business-related purpose, and use it in a way that could help people. Get the backstory in this article at the New York Times.