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Infodemiologists Beware: Recent Changes to the Google Health Trends API Result in Incomparable Data as of 1 January 2022
In an ever-increasingly online world, many Internet users seek information from online search engines such as Google. Accessing such search activity allows infodemiologists a glimpse into the collective online mind. Tools such as Google Trends and Google Health Trends (GHT) can be used to gauge sear...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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MDPI
2022
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9692853/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36430115 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph192215396 |
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author | Myburgh, Pieter Hermanus |
author_facet | Myburgh, Pieter Hermanus |
author_sort | Myburgh, Pieter Hermanus |
collection | PubMed |
description | In an ever-increasingly online world, many Internet users seek information from online search engines such as Google. Accessing such search activity allows infodemiologists a glimpse into the collective online mind. Tools such as Google Trends and Google Health Trends (GHT) can be used to gauge search activity in key geographical regions and for specific periods of time. Recently, Google implemented changes to the GHT platform. Evidence is provided here for an initial exploration of how this change impacted the data obtained from GHT. Comparing 177 weekly probabilities for short search sessions of 421 Freebase IDs in thirty geographies extracted from GHT both before and after the implemented change, a low correlation (median of all Spearman ρ = 0.262 [IQR 0.04; 0.53]) between these data was observed for the year 2022. In general, the extracted values are higher after the implemented changes, compared to the values extracted before the change. Future research using the GHT API should not attribute increases in GHT data from 1 January 2022 onward as being reflective of increased search activity for a specific keyword, but rather attribute it to the implemented change to the GHT sampling strategy. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9692853 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-96928532022-11-26 Infodemiologists Beware: Recent Changes to the Google Health Trends API Result in Incomparable Data as of 1 January 2022 Myburgh, Pieter Hermanus Int J Environ Res Public Health Communication In an ever-increasingly online world, many Internet users seek information from online search engines such as Google. Accessing such search activity allows infodemiologists a glimpse into the collective online mind. Tools such as Google Trends and Google Health Trends (GHT) can be used to gauge search activity in key geographical regions and for specific periods of time. Recently, Google implemented changes to the GHT platform. Evidence is provided here for an initial exploration of how this change impacted the data obtained from GHT. Comparing 177 weekly probabilities for short search sessions of 421 Freebase IDs in thirty geographies extracted from GHT both before and after the implemented change, a low correlation (median of all Spearman ρ = 0.262 [IQR 0.04; 0.53]) between these data was observed for the year 2022. In general, the extracted values are higher after the implemented changes, compared to the values extracted before the change. Future research using the GHT API should not attribute increases in GHT data from 1 January 2022 onward as being reflective of increased search activity for a specific keyword, but rather attribute it to the implemented change to the GHT sampling strategy. MDPI 2022-11-21 /pmc/articles/PMC9692853/ /pubmed/36430115 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph192215396 Text en © 2022 by the author. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Communication Myburgh, Pieter Hermanus Infodemiologists Beware: Recent Changes to the Google Health Trends API Result in Incomparable Data as of 1 January 2022 |
title | Infodemiologists Beware: Recent Changes to the Google Health Trends API Result in Incomparable Data as of 1 January 2022 |
title_full | Infodemiologists Beware: Recent Changes to the Google Health Trends API Result in Incomparable Data as of 1 January 2022 |
title_fullStr | Infodemiologists Beware: Recent Changes to the Google Health Trends API Result in Incomparable Data as of 1 January 2022 |
title_full_unstemmed | Infodemiologists Beware: Recent Changes to the Google Health Trends API Result in Incomparable Data as of 1 January 2022 |
title_short | Infodemiologists Beware: Recent Changes to the Google Health Trends API Result in Incomparable Data as of 1 January 2022 |
title_sort | infodemiologists beware: recent changes to the google health trends api result in incomparable data as of 1 january 2022 |
topic | Communication |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9692853/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36430115 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph192215396 |
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